


CARROLL D.WRIG 



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SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
of the LABOR QUESTION 



^OME ETHICAL PHASES 
of the LABOR QUESTION 

By 
CARROLL D. WRIGHT, Ph.D., LL.D. 

UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF LABOR 

Author of ^^ Induitrial E-volution of the United States" 
" Outline of Practical Sociology," etc. 




AMERICAN UNITARIAN 
ASSOCIATION: BOSTON: 1903 



Copyright 1902 
American Unitarian Association 



Second Edition 



CONTENTS. 



I. Religion in Relation to Sociology, 3 

II. The Relation of Political Econ- 
omy TO THE Labor Question ... 25 

III. The Factory as an Element in 

Civilization 81 

IV. The Ethics of Prison Labob . . . 161 



I 

RELIGION IN RELATION TO 
SOCIOLOGY. 



RELIGION IN RELATION TO 
SOCIOLOGY. 

If we depend upon lexicographers for a 
definition of religion, we find that it com- 
prehends a belief in the being and perfec- 
tion of God, in the revelation of his will to 
man, in man's obligation to obey his com- 
mands, and in man's accountableness to 
God ; and it also includes true godliness, or 
purity of Hfe, with the practice of aU moral 
duties. If we do not undertake to square 
reHgion with dogmatic theological thought 
and teaching, we shall come to the conclu- 
sion that, as distinct from theology, rehgion 
is godliness, or real purity in practice, con- 
sisting of the performance of aU known 
duties to God and our feUow-men and our- 
selves. If we search the heart and the con- 
science, this vnU. be the outcome. We shaU 
agree with Fichte, that reHgion is " faith in 

3 



4 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

a moral government of the world," and that 
without it "morality is superstition, which 
deceives the unfortunate with a false hope 
and makes them incapable of improvement." 
We shaU agree, too, with Kant, that rehgion 
is " reverence for the moral law as of divine 
command," and with Dr. Martineau, that 
religion is the "culminating meridian of 
morals." Still, we shall go beyond this, and 
recognize in religion, pure and simple and 
undefiled, the great moving force which un- 
derhes the formation of our characters, de- 
termines our action, not only as to self, but 
as to others, teaches us the rules of right 
and wrong, and that through character and 
conduct we show our sense of responsibility 
and of our accountableness to God and to 
our fellow-man, in the latter finding the 
practical work in which we can show the 
greatest honor to God and the greatest and 
highest comprehension of our best emotions. 
If we consult the lexicographer again, we 
shall find that sociology is the science of 
social phenomena, — the science which in- 
vestigates the laws regulating human society ; 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 5 

the science which treats of the general 
structure of society, the laws of its develop- 
ment, the progress of civilization, and all 
that relates to society. If we go to our own 
hearts and experiences, sociology becomes 
somethingr different from a science. It be- 
comes a habit of social relations, — the moral 
attitude of man to man, the comprehension 
of the methods and processes by which men 
grow out of self and into serviceableness to 
their fellows. It is, in a reHgious and an 
ethical sense, the soul of society, with man 
as the expression of the soul, and the means 
and the vehicle by which the soul of society 
works out the redemption of its material 
elements ; and ethics, which is not religion, 
but which is not ethics unless stimulated by 
it, means the truest, the highest, the divin- 
est relations of men in society. 

Again, we shall conclude that sociology 
deals with the institutions which enable 
society to perform its infinitely varied func- 
tions, that every feature of society which 
comprehends the action of a group of in- 
dividual units represents some institution. 



6 SOME ETUICAL PHASES 

and without regard to the theory which may- 
be adopted to account for the origin and 
development of society ; for, whatever that 
origin may have been, all organizations hav- 
ing the purpose of regulation, government, 
or defence are institutions created by in- 
dividuals in their relations to each other. 
Thus customs, laws, habits, traditions, re- 
ligions, — everything that represents the 
action of men in groups, — are institutions 
in a sociological sense. 

With these definitions we can appreciate 
the facetious answer of a student when 
asked. What is sociology ? He said it was 
an aspii-ation; and, while the answer was 
given to slur the science of sociology as 
something nebidous and incomprehensible, 
it has in it great truth. For the aim of 
society in all its regulations is to reach an 
ideal state, in which all units, individual and 
social, shall be happy, and shall in then- 
methods conduce to the happiness of all. 

Religion is something more than an as- 
piration. It is a hope. In it and through 
it and by it the human race has always 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 7 

looked for the sublimest consuinination of 
life, — that spii-itual happiness which comes 
through the hope of eternal welfare, which 
comes through the hope of a relation to God 
that shall make the man of hope something 
more than human : something divine. Re- 
ligion and sociology, therefore, with this 
comprehension, compass the highest ele- 
ments of correlated forces. They involve 
an interweaving of interests and a recog- 
nition of a common soiu-ce of existence of 
action and of ultimate end. Neither religion 
nor sociology can be studied alone, inde- 
pendently of the other. They must be 
studied side by side as correlated forces, 
each acting upon the other, each determin- 
ing the destiny of man, and hence of society. 
The earlier waiters on sociology framed 
their works upon what is known as the mate- 
riahstic or biological theory of society, — 
that society is an organism, developed on 
the cellidar plan, Hke the hiunan organism. 
The later writers do not consider this theory 
adequate to account for social organization ; 
and they have advanced the theory that so- 



8 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

ciety is the result of psychic forces, — of 
what Dr. Giddings characterizes " the con- 
sciousness of kind." If later writers are 
correct, — and they seem to me to be so, — 
reHgion must have played an important part 
in the evolution of society as a psychic 
force ; for the emotional nature of man is 
one of the principal elements of religious 
nature, which is emotional in the highest 
sense, as it relates to the deeper spiritual, 
and even the supernatural, tendencies of the 
human mind. 

Dr. Albion W. Small, a philosopher, a so- 
ciologist, and a believer in the deepest relig- 
ious life and in the influence of the teachings 
of rehgion, concludes that sociologists are, 
in the first place, subjecting social facts to 
such minute analyses that all science will be 
better understood ; second, that they are 
trying to untangle the complexities of the 
social process in all times and places, so that 
we may presently teach men how to find 
themselves in that portion of the process 
which is working out in their particular en- 
vironment ; third, that they are explaining 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 9 

the operation o£ social forces and formulat- 
ing the laws of their workings, so that we 
may presently know better what resources 
are available for human tasks and how they 
may be most effectively appHed; fourth, 
that they are trying to find standards for 
judgment about the social products of one 
time as compared with those of other times, 
so that we may take more accurate account 
of our stock of social achievements ; and, 
fifth, — and here is the deepest philosophy 
of Dr. Small's analysis, — that sociologists 
are trying to discover in the facts of social 
conditions and resources material out of 
which to construct more concrete and speci- 
fic and coherent ideals of the appropriate 
aims of hmnan endeavor.* Dr. Small' s ar- 
ticle on " The Value of Sociology to Work- 
ing Pastors " is commended. 

The great question arises. What kind of 
materials must be used to enable us to con- 
struct more concrete, specific, and coherent 
ideals of the appropriate aims of human en- 
deavor ? And the answer must be that an 

* Cf. the Outlook, June 17, 1899. 



10 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

ideal state of society is to be found only 
when religious elements predominate ; for, 
in studying sociology, we are searching for 
the philosophy of life, and both the rehgion- 
ist and the sociologist find that, no matter 
when society began, no matter when social 
combinations first began to organize their 
forces, rehgion played a prominent initiative 
part. There has been no race in its prime- 
val days, with or without organizations, that 
has not had its rehgious ceremonials, with 
their deep and lasting influence upon the 
pui-pose, character, and results of theii- as- 
sociations. It does not matter how crude 
or how repulsive these ceremonials may 
appear to us now, they were the deepest 
expressions of the religious elements of 
man at one time. 

We now believe that some forms of theo- 
logical dogma are simply the result of the 
superstitious reHgions found in the crudest 
races of men. A God or a number of gods 
have always had possession of the minds of 
men. We beheve in one immanent God, 
the source of all intelligence, who is all in- 



OF TUB LABOR QUESTION 11 

teUigence. This only raises us in the stand- 
ard of religious cidture and, I believe, in the 
power of religious force. We apply our 
religious culture to the shaping of human 
events, to the formation of hiunan entei-j^rise, 
to the building of character, to the pui-pose 
of human organizations, and hence to the 
real purpose of society itseK. We have 
grown out of savagery and barbarism and 
superstition in some degree ; but that degree 
is immense when we compare the present 
with the far past, and whether we are deal- 
ing with society or with rehgion as a force 
in society. 

The struggles of men assume a different 
phase as the development of reHgious beHef 
goes on, the development of social relations 
accompanying the reHgious development. 
We are just beginning to comprehend the 
living Christ in all the relations of men, — 
the Christ who lived before the Christian 
era, and who has had a living personality 
since then. We believe more and more in 
the true essence of religion, which is the 
absolute foundation of the very best society. 



12 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

This is found in the utterance, "Bear ye 
one another's burdens." But this sentiment 
is as old as creation, as new as to-day. 
While all the races, crude and cultured, 
have had their God or gods, all races have 
had their Christs ; and the Christ idea in 
social development has been summed up 
in the command, " What you do not like 
when done to yourself, do not do to others," 
as the inspiration of the Chinese philosopher 
five hundred years before our own great 
Master, when from his inspiration came the 
command, " Do unto others as ye would 
that others would do unto you." The Christ 
of the Buddhists gave the world the same 
inspiration ; and so did Seneca, and so did 
Kant. I have just read in a book entitled 
Better World Philosophy that this is 
the injunction which has been proclaimed 
by the sublimest souls that have pondered 
and agonized over the sins of beings. The 
injunction is to put yourseK in the place 
of others. It is consideration of others as 
ardent as consideration of self. It is the 
balancing of abilities, the social ideal.* So 

* Cf . Better World Philosophy, J. Howard Moore, p. 194. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 13 

in the great command of the greatest teacher 
of divine truth the world has ever seen, and 
of inspired teachers before and since his 
birth and death, — the command, " Bear ye 
one another's burdens," — religion and soci- 
ology find their deepest expression and their 
truest harmony. 

But sociology deals with practical prob- 
lems, with the great difficulties constantly 
besetting governments as the highest repre- 
sentations of social organization. How shall 
we deal with the poor and those needing the 
assistance of the well-to-do ? Crude charity, 
as a sociological force, says they must be as- 
sisted. ReHgion, as a divine force, gives 
charity the first place in human qualities. 
Religion and sociology, making a scientific 
study of this very difficulty in hiunan rela- 
tions, teach us that there is as much danger 
in benevolence and philanthropy as in the 
neglect of philanthropic and benevolent im- 
pulses. Experience, examination, and re- 
search show that crude charity is a menace 
to society. We throw many young men and 
women into penal institutions by our benevo- 



14 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

lent acts by bringing' them up in reformatory 
and charitable institutions until old enough 
to earn their own living, and then sending 
them out into the world without the knowl- 
edge or the technical skill by which they can 
sustain themselves. More enlightened re- 
ligion and more scientific sociology wiU right 
this wrong, and teach the true method under 
which men shall be equipped for life-work, 
and not simply educated to become pubHc 
wards. Religion has invaded the prison, so- 
ciology has furnished the facts, and the re- 
ligious heart, allied to sociological science, 
has developed penology into the science of 
reclamation. ReHgion has forgotten the 
wrathful God under which society justified 
itself in avenging its wrongs upon the wrong- 
doer, and has taught the world that the only 
true method is to treat the prisoner as a 
morally sick man, under the obligation that 
he shall be returned to society supplied with 
the knowledge the deficiency in which in a 
majority of cases brought him to the prison. 
Religion is reaching out into sociological 
lines in other directions. It is putting its 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 15 

hand upon government and upon all the in- 
tegral elements o£ government. It is influenc- 
ing the individual units o£ society, so that 
by their development and by theii- culture 
the government itself shall be as pure as its 
source, — a long struggle, to be sure ; but 
reHgion and sociology as allied forces, or, as 
a better expression, rehgion as a force in de- 
termining sociological work, is bringing about 
the regeneration. 

Sociology has as one of its departments 
poHtical economy ; and, although the econo- 
mists resent aU encroachments of religion or 
deny the existence of reHgion as a force in 
pohtical economy, it is, nevertheless, an as- 
sured fact that religion is making a new 
pohtical economy. The Ruskm school is 
increasing its student roU, and that in- 
creased student roU is developing new ele- 
ments in the political and economic rela- 
tions of man. We can join with Henry D. 
Lloyd in his enthusiasm when he declares 
that there is a new political economy, which 
looks first to the care and culture of 
men ; that there is a new seK-interest of 



16 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

the individual, who puts his family before 
himself, his country before his family, man- 
kind before his country, because there is 
filtering into his conscience the vast fact that 
his share of what is done for him by man- 
kind is of far more value to him than what 
he does for himself. This new political 
economy, which Mr. Lloyd describes as a 
new self-interest of the community, and 
which is going into the slums, factories, 
mines, and workshops, desires to make all 
safe by making its weakest safe; and Mr. 
Lloyd closes with the statement that there is a 
new state, — the organized body of Christ, — 
which feeds the hungry, heals the sick, and 
visits those in prison, and gathers up the 
children, — a new religion, in fact, a religion 
of progress, and of man as a partner in the 
creation of that progress, creating new ideas, 
new species of plants and animals, new men, 
and new society. In this hght, can we deny 
the force of rehgion in shaping our socio- 
logical work ? Patriotism is born of reHgion, 
and patriotism is a power in the development 
of society ; but in religion is found the very 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 17 

fundamental principle of patriotism, — that 
is, loyalty to a principle, loyalty to country, 
and, through loyalty to country, loyalty to 
God. 

A German evangeHcal, Rudolph Todt, in 
applying physiological science to society, 
finds that poHtical economy is the anatomy 
which makes known the consti'uction of the 
body social ; that socialism is the pathology 
that describes the maladies of society, and 
that the chiu-ch represents the therapeutics 
that prescribe the proper remedies. And on 
the title-page of his book he has inscribed 
the following : " Whoever woidd understand 
the social question, and wishes to aid in 
solving it, must have on his right hand the 
works on poHtical economy, on his left those 
on scientific socialism, and before him must 
keep open the New Testament." 

How emphatically true it is that by the 
adoption of this principle the labor question, 
with all its ramifications, is lifted to a higher 
plane than the mere consideration of some 
of the narrow tenets which have accompa- 
nied its discussion 1 The houi-s of labor, 



18 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

the question of wages, in this Hght do not 
constitute the labor question, but the great 
struggle of hiunanity to secure a higher 
standard of living, to be able to indulge in 
the spu-itual affairs of life, — those affairs 
that are above and beyond the mere contest 
for subsistence. And in the settlement of 
labor difficidties — the contests between 
labor and capital as represented by laborers 
and capitaHsts — this principle is the only 
one that can have any effective or lasting 
influence. Very many strikes and lockouts 
are the result of close observance of David 
Harum's golden rule for the horse-trader, — 
" Do unto the other fellow as you think the 
other fellow is going to do unto you, and 
do it fust." When this jockey ride in labor 
matters is displaced by the true Golden 
Rule, labor wars will cease, or be carried 
on purely on ethical and economic lines, 
avoiding those disastrous personal conflicts 
which not only interfere with business, as 
represented by the parties involved, but 
disturb the whole community. The labor 
question can be treated or solved only by 



OF THE LAB OB QUESTION 19 

Mr. Dole's Coining Peoj^le, — people who 
apply religion and knowledge at the same 
time to a specific question. 

We must adopt the therapeutics taught 
by reHgion. We must understand the mal- 
adies of society through sociological science. 
Each teaches that the greatest enemy of the 
human race, as well as the greatest impelling 
force to human progress and civihzation, is 
selfishness. The egoism of man has carried 
him into the worst crimes, both individually 
and collectively, the world has ever wit- 
nessed. Egoism has also carried him into 
the sublimest altruism and into the most 
aggressive movements for the benefit of the 
race at large. There is no act of altruism 
that has not in it the elements of selfishness. 
Religion would teach us that the selfishness 
or the egoism shall be of the purest quality, 
— shall be that selfishness which demands 
of a man such service as shall increase the 
happiness of those for whom it is intended 
as much as for his own happiness. Man 
lives by competitive force. He desires to 
win in the race. Religion teaches him that 



20 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

his service must be for humanity, and not 
for himself alone. It teaches that his rest- 
lessness, which was born when man came on 
the earth, must be shaped, guided, and used 
in the interest of all. 

So we can draw living principles from aU 
the reformers, of whatever name or dis- 
tinction, the world has ever seen. The 
sociahst teaches that society should be con- 
ducted on the basis of demandmg from each 
man according to his abihty and giving to 
each according to his needs, — a doctrine 
which has in it the essence of Christ's com- 
mand, but which is dangerous unless intel- 
Hgently carried out. The facts of sociology 
teach us the results of reckless adhesion to 
it ; while religion, on the other hand, teaches 
us the great benefits of its intelligent adop- 
tion in the light of the principles of the 
Christian religion. 

Man is fidl of faults. Sociology under- 
takes to reveal the faults of man in his 
social relations, not in a theological sense, 
but in a practical sense. The appHcation of 
the true essence of reHgion is correcting 



OF THE LAB OB QUESTION 21 

these faults, and making the very passions of 
men forcible in the service of God. 

It is not my province to speak to the 
clergy of the necessity of knowledge in the 
science of sociology ; but it may be inti- 
mated that the pulpit is not a lyceiun, is not 
a platform for the especial discussion of 
sociological questions, but that it is and 
should be a mediiun of instruction in those 
deep, practical, reHgious principles which, 
applied to ordinary, every-day human affaii-s, 
will lead to a better understanding, to a 
truer refonn than we have seen, and to the 
enHghtenment of men. The attempt to 
apply rehgion to sociological conditions, 
without a knowledge of all that the science 
of sociology can disclose in any particular 
direction, comes very near being an intel- 
lectual, if not a moral, crime. The pulpit 
is the place for the deepest rehgious in- 
struction ; but, as the deepest rehgious 
instruction means the welfare of the hu- 
man race in its social relations, the pulpit 
has a power for good or evil in this di- 
rection which cannot be estimated. Let 



22 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

the teaching of the piilpit he in the Hght of 
actual sociological science, and then the 
broadest and the most satisfactory results 
will he reached. Whoever undertakes to 
study science in any department, whether 
geology or sociology or biology or anthro- 
pology, without understanding the religious 
intei-pretation of the facts which these 
sciences disclose, falls short of his duty, 
falls short in his comprehension of the real, 
living Christ that pervades aU elements of 
aU society and aU revelations of science. 



n 

THE RELATION OF POLITICAL 

ECONOMY TO THE LABOR 

QUESTION. 



n 

THE RELATION OF POLITICAL 

ECONOMY TO THE LABOR 

QUESTION. 

In the preceding chapter the general prin- 
ciples of sociology, considered in the light 
of rehgion, have been promulgated. These 
principles form the treatment of this chapter, 
in which I shall speak of the demands labor 
is making or will make upon poUtical 
economy. 

The labor question, a short term for the 
evolution of industrial forces, includes a wide 
range of sociological studies, a general treat- 
ment of which would be impossible. I shaU 
not, therefore, undertake to discuss the labor 
question in its comprehensiveness, but only 
a phase of it. One must not, however, con- 
sider the matters I do not touch to be held 
in my own estimation as unimportant. I 
simply treat a side I have considered to some 

25 



26 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

extent, fully recognizing the paramount 
importance of those features I cannot even 
mention. 

The term " labor question " is used as 
representing the problem of working people 
in their struggle to secure a higher standard 
of living, but in this place it is used in a 
limited sense and as embracing the wants of 
the wage-laborer, or in a general way as rep- 
resenting the discussion of the just and equi- 
table distribution of profits, or the products 
of labor and capital. In this are to be found 
the vital elements of the labor question, 
whether from an economic or an ethical 
point of view. Pohtical economists grow very 
learned and even fascinating over the wages 
question, but usually on entirely economic 
grounds; while the just distribution of 
profits can best be discussed upon grounds 
covering both economics and ethics, for jus- 
tice and equity are involved in the considera- 
tion of the subject. 

A just distribution of profits, by which sup- 
port and provision for old age may be secured, 
depends much more upon the cost of living. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 27 

habits of frugality, temperance, good morals, 
sanitary conditions, educational privileges, 
and various forces of a moral nature than 
upon purely economical conditions. We 
must therefore view the whole superstructure 
in looking at the labor question, and not 
merely the economic shingles of the edifice. 

If I were speaking from the pulpit, and 
wished to frame a compound subject from 
language taken from Scripture, I should say. 
Whatsoever ye sow, that also shall ye reap, and 
he that is faithful over a few things shall be 
made ruler over many. At least, the princi- 
ples underlying the sayings from which such 
a subject would be drawn apply most forcibly 
to the consideration of the relations of em- 
ployers and employed, and of each to society. 

During the past one hundred and twenty 
years, pohtical economy, as a separate branch 
of philosophy, has sprung into existence. The 
age has been one of material progress. Eco- 
nomics has ruled almost at the expense of 
ethics, although the same age has seen won- 
derful structm-es of charitable and educational 
design grow into existence. The strides civ- 



28 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

ilization has made command our admiration, 
and its onward steps are marked by nmner- 
ous and convincing evidences ; but such evi- 
dences are outside the science of pohtical 
economy, and are only considered by it as 
the cost may enter into the distribution of 
wealth it seeks to create, but not as means 
for a happier and better condition wherein 
wealth could be more successfully produced. 

Material progress has sui-passed that of 
the arts, painting and sculpture, and litera- 
ture, for they live as well in the past ; and 
present efforts are rather to approach and 
equal than to excel the productions of old. 

Under the spur of this progress political 
economy has flourished, — first, by the pa- 
tronage and through the admiration of all 
classes. England gave it birth, and to it, 
her writers claim, she owes her industrial 
position in the past. It may be that to a 
too blind following of later teachings she 
owes to-day the partial loss of her old in- 
dustrial supremacy. I am not speaking of 
the Manchester school as such, but of the 
whole orthodox school of economists, which 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 29 

never admits to its curriciilmn the study of 
conditions not purely economic. America, 
i£ she desires to occupy the place England 
is vacating, must take lessons of her mother, 
and profit by her mistakes. 

The old school has been content to teach 
the laws that regulate the production, distri- 
bution, and exchange of wealth ; and these 
laws have formed the whole of the science 
of poHtical economy, so far as it can be called 
a science. It has studiously avoided all other 
matters, and, in the endeavors of its devotees 
to constitute it a science, has taken no cog- 
nizance of the conditions which, favorable 
or unfavorable, must attend the participators 
in the production, distribution, and exchange 
of commodities. It has been content to limit 
itself to things and their relations to indi- 
vidual and national wealth — more particu- 
larly the latter — rather than to include in 
its sphere of creed the vital relations of men. 
Even Mr. Mill, perhaps the most brilhant 
writer of the age upon the topic we are con- 
sidering, informs us * that " pohtical economy 

* Essays on Some Unpublished Questions, 1844. 



30 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

is concerned with man solely as a being who 
desires to possess wealth, and who is capable 
of judging of the comparative efficacy of 
means to that end. It makes entire abstrac- 
tion of every other human passion or motive, 
except those which may be regarded as per- 
petually antagonizing principles to the de- 
sire of wealth ; namely, aversion to labor, 
and desire of the present enjoyment of costly 
indulgences. . . . Political economy considers 
mankind as occupied solely in acquiring and 
consiuning wealth." Professor John K. In- 
gram * caUs this a vicious abstraction, which 
meets us on the very threshold of pohtical 
economy; and Professor F. A. Walker,! 
commenting upon this saying of Mill's, re- 
marks : " If Mr. Mill had merely meant that 
the pohtical economist should begin by in- 
quiring what such a monstrous race would 
do under the impulse of the antagonizing 
forces of greed and indolence, no one could 
have taken exception. But Mr. Mill did 
not mean this. He meant that the pohtical 

* Penn Monthly, November, 1879. 
t In Sunday Afternoon, May, 1879. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 31 

economist should end here, — should literally 
make entire abstraction, once for all, of every 
other hiunan passion or motive, and at no 
point in his reasoning should take account 
of any one of a score of recognizable and 
appreciable motives and feehngs which enter 
to influence the actions of men in respect to 
wealth, love of country, love of home, love of 
friends, mutual sympathy among members of 
the same class ; respect for labor, and interest 
in the laboring class on the part of the com- 
munity at large ; good will between landlord 
and tenant, between employer and employed ; 
the power of custom and tradition ; the force 
of inertia, ignorance, and superstition." 

Mr. Mill's statements represent the tenets 
of the old school, although the founder of 
the science, Adam Smith, began his labors 
in it as a professor of moral philosophy, and 
taught it as a branch of that philosophy. 
His followers, in their ambition, have 
strayed far from the doctrines of their great 
master ; and, with their departure from him, 
poHtical economy has lost the sympathy and 
even the attention of the wage-workers of 



32 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

English and American communities, the 
very support it largely needs and should 
have. But it woidd be unreasonable to 
expect them to have much reverence for 
what Carlyle has denominated " the dismal 
science," and George Howell "the grab-all 
science " ; " for," says the latter, " its funda- 
mental principles seem to be based on the 
Quaker's advice to his son, ' Make money 
honestly i£ you can, but make money.' " 
The majority of the followers of Smith have 
forgotten that Christianity says, " Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself " ; " Do 
unto others as ye would that men should do 
unto you " ; " Love one another " ; " Bear 
ye one another's burdens." On the other 
hand, they practically say. Love thyself; 
seek thine own advantage ; promote thine 
own welfare ; put money in thy purse : the 
welfare of others is not thy business. 

It is because of this hard, unsympathetic 
nature of the so-called science of political 
economy that the labor question has come to 
be considered as distinct from it; and, be- 
cause of the departure from sound ethical 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 33 

features of the science by most of the lead- 
ing writers, there has sprung up within a 
few years a new school, which bids fair to 
include on its roll of pupils the men in all 
civHized lands who seek by legitimate means, 
and without revolution, the ameHoration of 
unfavorable industrial and social relations 
wherever foimd as the surest road to com- 
paratively permanent material prosperity. 

This school is neither large nor as yet 
powerful. Its first note came from Sis- 
mondi in 1818, and was echoed by an emi- 
nent Scotch divine. Dr. Thomas Chalmers, 
in 1832, who undertook, as part of his duty 
m a course of theological lectures to divinity 
students in the University of Edinburgh, to 
treat of political economy, which he defines 
as aiming " at the diffusion of sufficiency 
and comfort throughout the mass of the 
population by a multipHcation or enlarge- 
ment of the outward means and materials of 
hiunan enjoyment." * He further declared 
that his object would be gained if he could 
demonstrate that even for the economic 

* Introduction to Chalmers's Political Economy, 1832. 



34 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

well-being of a people their moral and relig- 
ious education was the first and greatest 
object of national policy, and that while 
this is neglected a government in its anx- 
ious and incessant labors for a well-condi- 
tioned state of the Commonwealth would 
only flounder from one delusive shift or 
expedient to another, under the double mis- 
fortune of being held responsible for the 
prosperity of the land, and yet finding that 
to be an element helplessly and hopelessly 
beyond its control. That the theory of 
wealth had to be exammed in connection 
with the theory of population was a truth 
Dr. Chalmers recognized with the pohtical 
economists ; but he believed the great result- 
ino" lesson of such examination to be the 
intunate alliance which obtains between the 
economical and the moral, inasmuch as the 
very best objects of the science coidd not by 
any possibility be realized but by dint of 
prudence and virtue among the laboring 
masses. 

Could this spirit have been breathed 
through all the wonderful volumes on po- 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 35 

litical economy which have been written 
both sides of the Atlantic, there would 
have been fewer works periodically pub- 
Hshed upon the causes of depressions, and 
upon remedies for labor difficidties. 

The creed of the new school is finding 
its way into the hearts and the minds of 
men ; and it has for its advocates some 
of the best thinkers in Europe, with a few 
contemporaries in this country, who are ques- 
tioning the logic of their old masters. I am 
proud to sit at the feet of these new teachers, 
and to declare my allegiance to such doc- 
trines, which are the need of the world to- 
day so far as economic questions are con- 
cerned. They recognize as fundamental 
elements of political economy the humanity 
of the world and its moral condition, because 
the best humanity is to be found where the 
best morality prevails. They recognize that 
it is by the labor of the people employed in 
various branches of industry that all ranks 
of the community, in every condition of life, 
annually subsist ; and that, by the produce 
of this labor alone, nations become powerfid 



36 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

in proportion to the extent of the surplus 
which can be spared for the exigencies of 
state ; and that, by the increase or diminu- 
tion of the produce of this labor, states, 
kingdoms, and empires flourish or decay.* 

Had such principles formed a part only 
of the considerations of economists during 
the past seventy-five or one hundred years, 
there would not now be heard the lamenta- 
tions concerning the decline or unpopularity 
of the science which occasionally come up 
from the old school, nor would the laboring 
masses be averse to consulting and profiting 
by the teachings of the masters of one of 
the most attractive departments of human 
knowledge. We have the testimony of Pro- 
fessor Bonamy Price of England that pohti- 
cal -economy is undergoing a crisis, and is 
passing through a revolution, both in the 
region of thought amongst its teachers and 
students, as well as in the great world, in 
the practical life of mankind. This revolu- 
tion will result well for the happiness and 

* Cf. Colquhoun, Wealth, Power, and Besources of British 
Empire. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 37 

welfare of our kind; for it will bring to 
their support, to their improvement, to then- 
education, the best and most thoroughly 
digested thought of the first writers of the 
world. Of this thought they have long- 
been robbed. This crisis will not take from 
political economy one jot or one tittle of the 
grand principles which make it, but will add 
to it those vitaKzing elements which will 
make of it at once a science and a philosophy 
which will commend itself to the under- 
standing of the very workers whose prod- 
ucts serve to create the want of the science 
and the science itself. It will result in 
bringing into the science the treatment of 
the uses of wealth, as well as its accumula- 
tion, distribution, and exchange, and incite 
discussion upon the relations of labor and 
capital on an ethical basis ; combining with 
the old question the old school always asks, 
" Will it pay ? " another and higher query, 
"Is it right?" 

Political economy has failed to see that 
the highest industrial prosperity of nations 
has attended those periods most given to 



38 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

moral education and practices. History is 
full of lessons from which the new school 
will attempt to teach that the growth of a 
healthy, inteUigent, and virtuous operative 
population is as much for the pecuniary 
interest of manufacturers themselves as for 
civilization ; that the decHne of the morals 
of the factory means the dechne of the 
nation ; and that the morals, the force, the 
higher welfare of the nation, depend upon 
the welfare of the working masses. 

From these premises I predict that politi- 
cal economy will, in the near future, deal 
largely with the family, with wealth, with 
the state, as the three features of its doc- 
trines, and not confine itself to wealth alone. 
Under family, it will take cognizance of the 
relations of the sexes, marriage and divorce, 
the position of woman, and the education 
and employment of children ; the latter form- 
ins- the most vital element in the economic 
considerations of the scientists, as well as 
inviting the ardent sympathies of the phi- 
lanthropists. Under wealth, the old chapters 
will be revivified in the liTflit of moral dis- 



OF THE LABOE QUESTION 39 

cernment, relative to all the delicate, but 
always reciprocal, relations of labor and 
capital. Under state, political ethics will be 
taught as a direct means of securing the 
highest material and social prosperity. 

These considerations in the future will be 
demanded to answer the question constantly 
put, how labor may be rendered more gen- 
erally attractive and remunerative, without 
impairing the efficiency of capital, so that all 
the workers of society may have their proper 
share in the distribution of profits. This I 
conceive to be the true labor question of 
to-day in the limited sense. Of course it 
is not that of the sociaHsts, nor of many 
radical labor reformers who find themselves 
on the verge of socialism, but have not the 
courage to adopt its tenets; but it is the 
sober question of the sober, industrious, and 
thrifty workingmen, and the himiane, large- 
hearted employers, of our country, — two 
types of men I prefer to speak to, hoping 
thereby to indirectly speak to the Shylocks 
of both orders; for, while the capitalists 
have their unprincipled Shylocks in one 



40 SOMiJ ETHICAL PHASES 

capacity, the reformers have theirs in 
another. 

The limited labor question, as I have an- 
nounced it, seeks no panacea. It recognizes 
the faults of our civiUzation as those be- 
longing to development, not to inauguration. 
" And that there is not any one abuse or 
injustice prevaiHng in society by merely 
abolishing which the human race would pass 
out of suffering into happiness." * It rec- 
ognizes the fallacy of attempting to win 
advantages by isolated attacks at some 
special point, and that, like Christianity, 
civilization and its wonderful movements, it 
must attack aU along the line, and hence 
make itseH felt in all progressive steps and 
attempts to reach a higher and better life. 
It reaches beyond the hackneyed statements 
of the old school, that the interests of labor 
and capital are one, and incorporates them 
with another, that they are reciprocal ; and 
while it freely admits that capital loans 
machinery and all the auxiliaries of pro- 
duction to the workiugman, without which 

* Chapters on Socialism, Mill. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 41 

advance he could not labor, except at ruin- 
ous processes, it wants capital to feel that it 
depends for its vitality upon the ability of 
labor to accept the loan ; that capital in- 
vested in the machinery or the plant is dead 
matter until the operative vitaHzes it with 
his presence ; and it knows well, that, if 
either undertakes to do as it chooses, it 
either falls or is obliged to accept the most 
meagre results. It demands that each 
should consult the other if both are to be 
active and productive ; and its advocates 
find that in all communities where reciprocal 
interests prevail, and a moral standard act- 
uates both parties, the best prosperity is 
sustained. And, reaching farther than in- 
dividuals and beyond industrial success, it 
claims that a broad catholicity in trade is 
essential to national success, and must take 
the place of the grasping principles of the 
old school, which have been sufficiently 
disastrous to both individuals and to nations. 
These demands, which seek to avoid adjust- 
ments by all and every revolutionary means 
suggested by enthusiasts, and which appear 



42 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

upon the surface at every recurrence of 
industrial depression, are based upon ethical 
grounds, and yet in them lie the elements 
of economic progress. 

From these statements it will be seen how 
thoroughly essential it is that political econ- 
omy should deal with all the conditions of 
men, — their passions, crimes, appetites, — 
and should teach them how to make their 
passions subserve the highest mterests of 
humanity, instead of abusing them and mak- 
ing them devilish. 

Pohtical economy, when it has been 
brought to the height of its grand mission, 
should, above aU other considerations, point 
out the causes which have operated in lead- 
ing people to good or evil, to prosperity or 
dechne. Investigation is bringing these 
causes to light. When political economy 
and history shall have progressed in these 
directions sufficiently for general history to 
become philosophical, the first places will 
not be allotted, as now, in most of the 
works of our classic authors, to conquerors, 
haughty governors who enriched cities by 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 43 

ruining countries, and to pretended heroes, 
who have been the seeming scourges of 
hiunanity ; nor will the grand epochs of his- 
tory be exclusively associated with such 
celebrities, but will be dedicated to those 
great men, the memory of whom has been 
too often neglected. I mean those who 
have loved peace, honored honest motives, 
strengthened rural life, favored good local 
government, given protection to smaller and 
struggling nations, and contributed without 
noise or ostentation to the development of 
pubHc prosperity by the practice of the 
highest morality in commercial and poHtical 
life.* 

Corruption comes from two sources, the 
high and the low, but generally springs 
from the governing or superior classes. It 
sometimes derives its chief strength from 
persons connected with estabhshments for 
labor ; and in this case the evil may have 
been propagated either by the proprietors or 
the workmen : but, no matter in what way 
it originates, it has really but one leading 

* Cf . Le Play, Organization of Labor, pp. 66, 67. 



44 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

cause, — the transgression of the moral law ; 
and with such transgression there always 
comes industrial decline. The prosecution 
of this line of thought leads to the fullest 
indorsement of Le Play, when he says that 
" the hest expression of the moral law is the 
Decalogue. . . . The people who show the 
most respect for these commandments are 
precisely those who enjoy, in the highest 
degree, competence, stability, and harmony. 
In carrying on the useful arts under the in- 
fluences of these divine laws and precepts, 
the best organization of labor is everywhere 
effected, — that organization which, par ex- 
cellence, may be called the customs of work- 
shops." Dependence upon such precepts 
would carry the people of the world over 
periods of depression without an avalanche 
of solutions at every stage for depressions. 
Just at this time, when prosperity has 
opened all the factories in the land, and 
crowded all our wharves with produce, the 
danger is great ; for moral decline is espe- 
cially provoked by a kind of error, finding 
its support in the doctrine of uninterrupted 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 45 

and absolute progress, signalizing the com- 
ing of an indefinite era of prosperity, for 
which the people are to depend upon blind 
destiny, without being called upon to merit 
it by devotion, personal sacrifice, or patriot- 
ism. This tendency, always a positive evil, 
is showing its influence at this time in sud- 
denly inflated prices of commodities, a spii'it 
of speculation, and a wilhngness to extend 
credits. The result can easily be foreseen 
in the light of the political economy of the 
labor question, — a few more years of re- 
markable prosperity, and then a period of 
depression, when everybody will be trying 
to discover the craise of the hard times, 
when, so far as history is reliable, the chief 
cause will be the same as it ever has been, — 
extended personal credits. Inflated com- 
mercial credits will always bring disaster. 

The principles of ethico-pohtical economy 
lie deeper down than the laws of rent, profits, 
supply and demand, cost of production, the 
wages-fund, and the like. The true matter is 
the essential constitution of human nature and 
the fundamental relations of man to natural 



46 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

and moral forces. Out of these are drawn the 
ultimate justification of economic laws.* 
Without them, and with a too persistent ad- 
hesion to absolutely economic laws, the 
effect upon the industries of the world has 
been discouraging. Ethical wisdom alone 
can remedy such things. This suggests that 
the precepts of the Decalogue cannot be pre- 
served by a people, except when each gen- 
eration has the power, and the desire which 
gives the power, to teach them to the one 
which follows ; and this can only be secured 
by strong moral elements united with the 
sacredness of the family. In the sacredness 
of the family is found the strength of a 
people. The desire to see a family growing 
up begets the industry and frugaHty which 
allows of its support ; and any industrial 
condition which prevents the young men 
from becoming the heads of families is in 
direct opposition to the best economical pros- 
perity of the race. Statistics prove conclu- 
sively three things, — 1st, That marriages are 
decreasing in proportion to the increase of 

* Cf . Henry A. James, Communism in America, p. 47. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 47 

population ; 2d, That divorces increase ; 3d, 
That illegitimate births increase. These in- 
controvertible facts are either the results of 
definite causes, or the causes of results not 
yet made clear ; and I contend that, in either 
case, society, and certainly the labor ques- 
tion, has the right to demand their recog- 
nition in the science of political economy, as 
directly affecting the equitable distribution 
of the profits of production and the condition 
of all engaged in the work of production. 

The dii-ect and sure bearing of the in- 
fluences springing from a condition of debt 
cannot be over-estimated so far as the evil 
effects upon industrial prosperity are con- 
cerned ; and when a family, in order to bring 
to itself the ordinary necessaries of exist- 
ence, is obliged to find a margin against it 
at the close of the year, we may be sure, 
whether the debt is the result of extrava- 
gance, or want of work, or want of proper 
remuneration, there is a lessening of moral 
tone and an increasing carelessness of obliga- 
tions incurred, results which have an imme- 
diate and unmistakable bearing upon the 



48 SOME ETHICAL FITASES 

welfare of the community. Surely, as a mat- 
ter of economics only, the grand science of 
Adam Smith should recognize these things. 

The influence of stable family life upon 
industrial prosperity leads us very naturally 
to consider the position of woman in her 
relations to the productions of a state. 

The loss of proper respect to women al- 
ways precedes decline of any description, 
and especially marks the reign of immoral 
life. That delicacy of sentiment which, 
among Anglo-Saxons, shields women passing 
alone through public ways, relying upon the 
protection of all men, when wanting, is too 
often replaced by gross impropriety. This 
loss of respect has been, in the history of 
the world, the result either of disorganization 
in private family life, or in the place of 
labor : but, however it grows, it always les- 
sens resistance to corruption, — in fact, 
blinds the mind to corruption ; for it saps 
the authority of government to a greater 
degree than it does that of the father or the 
proprietor. 

When woman is compelled by industrial 



OF THE LABOR QL^ESTIOJST 49 

customs to cease to consider the highest con- 
secration of her life to be to the duties of 
maternity, she ceases to be the minister of the 
domestic circle, the very foundation of ma- 
terial prosperity. Nor does this consecration 
prevent her highest intellectual development, 
— in fact, it demands it, and her political 
power and equaHty, too ; but when her wages 
and the wages of her little ones become nec- 
essary for the support of the family, that it 
may be kept intact, the natural result, in due 
time, is that very loss of respect I have 
counted so disastrous. 

I have reference only to principles in- 
volved ; and these principles teach that the 
condition of inferiority into which people 
plunge when respect for woman is lost from 
any cause, whether from her work in a fac- 
tory under modern conditions in England 
and America, or beside a mule in Belgiiun, 
or under a heavy biuden in Italy, cannot 
be too much dwelt upon. The mischief it 
effects weighs upon society at large, and 
especially upon the wage-receivers, whom it 
renders too often incapable of satisfjdng 



50 HOME ETHICAL PHASES 

that legitimate desire which prompts them 
to seek promotion in social ranks. In fact, 
whenever honest love has lost its attraction, 
and the consent of the bride implies a finan- 
cial recompense, young men make no efforts 
to provide for marriage by securing a home 
for a family, but estabhsh themselves prema- 
turely, and roam about all their lives among 
boarding-houses, depriving themselves of the 
moral and material advantages intimately 
associated with an indissoluble union of the 
family and the fireside.* Such a man does 
not, as a rule, hold himself bound to engage 
in any thing which tends prospectively to 
moral amelioration ; and, having taken no 
pains to secure a home for a family, he has 
lost the very best opportunity of acquiring 
frugal habits. His family is compelled to 
give the preference to city factories, and, as 
a natural consequence of loss of respect, des- 
titution and misery in time are sure to fol- 
low, especially when the combination with 
other manufactories, commercial crises, and 

*Some of these thoughts on the family are taken in part 
from Le Play, Organization of Labor, — a work I commend to 
all students of social economy. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 51 

public and private reverses have led to a 
stoppage of labor. Under such circum- 
stances the estabHshment of wages becomes 
an embarrassing subject. Difficulties in- 
crease, leading to irritating discussions ; and 
the low moral tone of the operative, result- 
ing from his first loss of respect for his wife, 
together with the grasping or impecunious 
state of his employer, brings about most un- 
happy conditions so often observed. Not 
that other causes do not enter into the case, 
but those I have stated are potent, and in 
themselves so forcibly affect the prosperity 
of communities, that they have their place 
in the philosophy of economics, where the 
poHtical economist of the future will find 
them fully discussed. In the home Hes the 
future welfare of our country. It is a hope- 
ful sign that in general these conditions 
under modern industry, as will be seen in 
the next chapter, are far more favorable 
than of old. 

The material prosperity of a community 
depends much upon the health of its work- 
ers, and the health of workers depends in 



oil SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

a very large degree upon sanitary surround- 
ings. In order that the physical condition 
of the people may be improved by every 
means, social economy deals with the sub- 
jects of sewerage, tenement houses, light; 
and ventilation ; and in this respect social 
science teaches valuable lessons to political 
science. 

In this connection I cannot refrain from 
weaving in a few thoughts from W. R. Greg^ 
an English writer, with some of my own^ 
Dwelling upon the physical and moral devel 
opment of the race as essential to prosperity^ 
it may be asked, What may v/e not rationally 
hope for when the condition of the masses 
shall receive that concentrated and urgent 
attention which has hitherto been directed 
to furthering the interests of more favored 
ranks? what, when charity, which for cen- 
turies has been doing mischief, shall begin to 
do good? what, when the countless pulpits^ 
that so far back as history can reach, have 
been preaching Catholicism or Anglicanism^, 
Presbyterianism or Calvinism, or other ismSj 
shaU set to work to preach Christianity at 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 53 

last? Do we ever even approach to a due 
estimate of the degree in which every strong- 
hold of vice or folly overthrown, exposes, 
weakens, and undermines every other? of 
the extent to which every improvement, so- 
cial, moral, or material, makes every other 
easier ? of the countless ways in which phys- 
ical reform reacts on intellectual and ethical 
progress and the prosperity of our indus- 
tries? Under the constant teaching of a 
moral philosophy which shall embrace the 
poHtical economy of the labor question, 
what a transf oimation — almost a transfigu- 
ration — will not spread over the condition 
of civihzed communities, when, by a few 
generations, during which hygienic science 
and sense shall have been in the ascend- 
ant, the restored health of mankind shall 
have corrected the morbid exaggerations of 
our appetites ; when, by insisting upon the 
healthy environment of oiu* toiling masses, 
the more questionable instincts and pas- 
sions, which, under such rule as I have indi- 
cated, shall have been less and less exercised 
and stimulated for centuries perhaps, shall 



54 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

have faded into comparative quiescence, and 
have come under the control of the will ; 
when, from the expulsion of vitiated air, 
disordered constitutions, whether diseased, 
criminal, or defective, which now spread and 
propagate so much mischief, and incur so 
much useless expense to taxpayers, shall 
have been largely eliminated ; when sounder 
systems of educating the young shall have 
prevented the too early awakening of natural 
desires; when more rational, higher, and 
soberer notions of what is needful and desir- 
able in social life, a wiser simplicity in living, 
and a more thorough conformity to moral 
law shall have rendered the legitimate grati- 
fication of our appetites more easy and bene- 
ficial, and when that which is needed for 
a happy home shall have become attainable 
by frugahty, sobriety, and toil ? 

These conditions, so desirable to be 
reached, are not impossible ones, and are not 
to be reached by the revolutionary schemes 
of any party or sect, but by the gradual 
adoption of sanitary laws in the dwellings 
and homes of the people ; and the new 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 55 

school will teach that the secondary, and 
often the primary, causes and encourage- 
ments of intemperance are bad air and im- 
wholesome food, which create a craving for 
drink ; bad company, which tempts it ; 
undue facilities, which conduce to it ; squaHd 
homes, which drive men forth for cheerful- 
ness ; and the want of other comfortable 
places of resort, which leaves no refuge but 
the pubHcan's parlor or den. And if, on 
the other hand, we find that the conse- 
quences are poverty, squalid homes, bru- 
taHty, crime, and the transmission and 
perpetuation of vitiated constitutions, who 
can say they cannot be prevented by the 
sound administration of sanitary laws, which 
shall prohibit the existence of bad air, of 
un ventilated dwellings, the undue multipli- 
cation and constant accessibility of gin and 
beer shops, and the poisoning of wholesome 
food and drink? We cannot discuss the 
labor question from either the etliical or 
economic side without consideration of the 
temperance question ; and from the results 
of such consideration it is perfectly clear to 



56 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

my own mind that the sohition of the tem- 
perance question is largely in the control of 
the employers of labor. The interests of 
capital as well as of labor, the interests of 
religion itself, demand a sober and indus- 
trious community ; and, when the employers 
of labor generally shall demand abstinence 
from alcohohc drinks as a quahfication for 
employment, the ugly problem, so far as the 
working masses are concerned, will be far on 
the way to settlement. What will bring the 
employers to the same issue is perhaps a 
knottier problem. The presence of crime 
works a direct injury upon the welfare of 
the workingman in many ways. It costs 
him more to Hve because of it ; it disturbs 
his sense of justice because the convict 
works at the same occupation which fur- 
nishes his support : but, while the labor 
reformer cries for the abolition of convict 
labor, the pohtical economy of the labor 
question cries for the reduction of the num- 
ber of criminals by the prevention of crime 
as the surest and most permanent remedy 
for whatever evils may grow out of the 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 57 

practice of employing convicts in productive 
labor. We make criminals now ; for three- 
fourths of the crime committed is by young 
men who are temporarily led astray, and the 
fact that fifty per cent of all the convicts in 
the states prisons of the United States are 
under twenty-six years of age only confirms 
the estimate. These accidental criminals we 
make into positive convicts, to be fed upon 
the production of men outside. We shall 
learn better methods in the future civil state, 
in which wise and effective legislation, 
backed by adequate administration resulting 
from a sound public sentiment, shall have 
made all violation of law, all habitual crime, 
obviously, and inevitably, a losing game, and 
when the distribution of wealth, and its use, 
shall receive both from the statesman and 
the economist the same sedulous attention 
which is now concentrated exclusively upon 
its acquisition.* 

The intelligent workingmen of this coun- 
try do not object to wealth, but to its mis- 
use. They know that luxuiy — I speak of 

* Professor F. A. Walker. 



68 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

enervating luxury — depopulates the coun- 
try, and annihilates by degrees the class 
of husbandmen ; for indolence and avidity 
tempt them to quit a laborious occupation 
for one which is more lucrative, though less 
certain. The ease in which the artifices of 
luxury live seduces the uidigent peasantry, 
draws them to the manufacturing centres, and 
the country is deserted. Luxury corrupts 
the morals of men, — a truth no ethical writer 
wiQ decHne to adopt ; but morals may sub- 
sist with wealth : it is luxury which vitiates. 
It occasions continual variations of taste and 
manners. The expense luxury requires in- 
flames cupidity ; money is run after, and 
purchased at any rate ; and from the moment 
this mercenary greediness possesses the mass 
of the nation, as it did to considerable extent 
in 1873, vu'tue becomes ridiculous ; honor, a 
chimera ; and specidative credit takes the 
place of a sound basis for commercial transac- 
tions. Merit is then weighed by gold : digni- 
ties and employments and offices are valued 
only in proportion to the money they bring 
in. The rigor of laAv yields to the impulse 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 59 

of luxury. In this condition a fatal calm 
exists as a sure corollary, which looks like 
prosperity, but which simply forbodes a vio- 
lent storm. 

The ethical view of the matter insists that 
luxury debases the soul and the mind, and 
therefore demands that political economy 
should teach the science of the use of wealth, 
as well as of its acquisition ; and the best use 
of wealth can only follow the possession of 
high moral character by its owner. 

The use of accumulation beyond the actual 
needs of industry involves, of course, the 
highest elements of character in both the 
parties to its growth : for the resources 
which render organized or individual labor 
most effective are on the side of capital, 
while the industry, patience, skill, and disci- 
phne which give life and action to the dead 
masses of capital, are on the side of labor ; 
and, in any community where there is no 
combination of the two forces, both will 
waste away, and the nation decline and per- 
ish ; and unless there be an inteUigent settle- 
ment, upon high moral grounds, of the re- 



60 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

spective claims of each force in the combina- 
tion, ceaseless strife and conflicts will, by a 
longer and more miserable route, lead to the 
same catastrophe.* These propositions must 
be true if we recognize what labor truly is. 
John Ruskin has given the best definition : 
" Labor is the contest of the life of man with 
an opposite ; the term ' life ' including his in- 
tellect, soul, and physical power, contending 
with question, difficulty, trial, or material 
force. Labor is of a higher or lower order 
as it includes more or fewer of the elements 
of life ; and labor of good quality, in any 
khid, includes always as much intellect and 
feeling as will fully and harmoniously regulate 
the physical force." t With this idea of 
labor, that man is richest who, havmg per- 
fected the functions of his own life to the 
utmost, has also the widest influence, both 
personal and by means of his accumulative 
wealth, over the lives of others ; and, again, 
that nation is the richest which nourishes 
the greatest number of noble and happy hu- 
man beings.J All this may seem to be 

* ABonymous. t Unto This Last. 1 Cf. Ibid. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 61 

strange political economy ; but it is of that 
nature which the future will demand as lead- 
ing most directly to national and material 
prosperity. The new school will recognize 
all the good that comes from the doctrine of 
laissez fai?' e, ov the "let alone" theory of 
the old : but it will insist upon the Hvehest 
activity on the part of capitaHsts to see to it 
that their employes are put upon the best 
possible footing as to all the material sur- 
roundings of life ; that they have all the ad- 
vantages to health, morals, and happiness, 
which come from sanitary regulations and 
practical education ; and it will teach em- 
ployers that a larger dividend can be drawn 
from the products of a community compara- 
tively free from crime, intemperance, pov- 
erty, and vice of all kinds, than from one 
where these things are tolerated ; and it will 
teach labor to demand of society the condi- 
tions I have described as the surest means of 
raising wages, shortening hours, and giving 
it the most attractive and remunerative em- 
ployment. 

Laissez faire can never be a substitute 



62 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

for the higher principles of Christianity, and 
they always demand action. " Society, when 
at tunes it awakens, by periods of industrial 
distress, from dreams of a new golden age, 
to be realized by mechanical inventions, 
march of intellect, accumulation of capital, 
or by sound political economy, finds itself 
compelled by terrible necessity to abandon 
the system of laissez /aire, and obliged to 
embark in a struggle for life, with the ele- 
ments of disorganization and ruin." 

The only effectual method of action is 
that in which each person begins by improv- 
ing and reforming himself ; that is, a revival 
of feelings of duty and moral obligation, 
whose decay is always the primary source of 
evil, leads to innumerable individual efforts, 
and to an improved state of public opinion, 
without which legislation can do but httle. 
To be sure, we beheve that Providence 
which rules the destinies of nations will 
bring about its appointed ends by its ap- 
pointed means ; but it is no less certain that 
each one of us, laborer or capitalist, has 
duties to perform, the responsibility of which 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 63 

cannot be shifted to the shoulders of Fate, — 
another and older name for the system of 
laissez faire. The new school will demand 
that every one who, in his public or private 
capacity, can do anything to relieve misery, 
to combat evil, to assert right, to redress 
wrong, shall do it with his whole heart and 
soul.* 

It wiQ teach that government " should not 
connive at what is openly and notoriously 
immoral, even for revenue purposes ; nor will 
it permit, by its sanction, a free trade in 
vice, with only the restriction that it shall 
be carried on wholesale instead of at retail." 

The very best results to be gained depend 
almost entirely upon systems of industrial 
organization with law and morality dominant 
in society. Comte has told the world that 
" the state of every part of the social whole 
at any time is intimately connected with the 
contemporaneous state of all others. Re- 
ligious behef, philosophy, science, the fine 
arts, commerce, navigation, government, — aU 
are in close mutual dependence on one an- 

* Cf . Laing's Essays. 



64 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

other, insomuch that, when any considerable 
change takes place in one, we may know that 
a parallel change in all the others has pre- 
ceded or will follow it." 

Every accession to " man's empire over 
nature " may be, and probably is, productive 
of good to mankind at large ; but we should 
never forget that any increase in the material 
forces at our disposal involves an increase of 
intellectual and moral energy. Such doctrine 
will inspire all classes with an endeavor to 
remedy the defects of the present edifice, 
rather than attempt a new construction upon 
its ruins. Such endeavors may meet with 
failure in one age, and be followed by suc- 
cess in another, as grand mechanical projects, 
instituted before their time, fail in the gen- 
eration which saw their inception, yet be- 
come the admired achievements of the next. 
If the principle be true, let it be followed by 
employers and by men till the requisite 
higher notions of morality be planted firmly. 
We can then join the passionate vehemence 
'of Carlylein this utterance: *' The leaders 
of industry, if industry is ever to be led, are 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 65 

virtually the captains of the world. If there 
be no nobleness in them, there will never be 
an aristocracy more." 

The pohtical economy of the coming gen- 
eration of writers will insist upon proper 
contracts respecting labor ; and, while it will 
throw aside the idea of productive co-opera- 
tion, it will be able to discover a system of 
contract which shall improve the whole con- 
dition of the employe so far as liis relations 
to capital and the management of capital are 
concerned. In' the recent past, social phi- 
losophy has become more and more cog- 
nizant of the distinctions between the ex- 
change of commodities and the contract for 
services ; and mildew will strike the political 
economy which denies the validity of the 
distinction. " Seventy-five years ago scarcely 
a single law existed in any country of 
Europe for regulating the contract for ser- 
vices in the interest of the laboring classes. 
At the same time the contract for commod- 
ities was everywhere subject to minute and 
incessant regfulation. . . . Can there be won- 
der that statesmen and the mass of the people 



66 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

entertain slight regard for political economy, 
whose professors refuse even to entertain 
consideration of the difference between ser- 
vices and commodities in exchange, and 
whose representatives in legislation have op- 
posed almost every limitation upon the con- 
tract for labor as unnecessary and mischiev- 
ous?"* 

Political economy needs new life, a warmer 
blood, and a more thorough appreciation of 
the sinews of production ; and, when this 
appreciation comes to it, or is forced upon 
it, the science will become a moral philosophy 
as well, and many of the dark places in the 
life of labor will be made bright and limii- 
nous with the light of prosperity. 

The experience of England since the first 
years of the last century, when disorder in 
the sphere of labor showed itself by un- 
mistakable signs, furnishes striliing illustra- 
tion of the absence of the principles I am 
contending for. Orthodox political economy 
portrayed all the advantages of the division 
of labor, the results of which are of the 

* F. A. Walker, Sunday Afternoon, May, 1879. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 67 

greatest importance to mankind ; but, like 
all great steps in advance, it carried certain 
evils with it, which could not have existed if 
carried on in accord with high moral con- 
siderations. 

The great proprietors of England did not 
take into account the advantages the laborers 
once seciu*ed to themselves by combining 
domestic industi'ies with their work in the 
manufactories. They, bemg exclusively pre- 
occupied by the technical details of pro- 
duction, forgot the duties which good morals 
would have imposed, but which poHtical 
economy failed to teach. The proprietors 
unscrupidously drew the workmen from all 
rural employments by offers of tempting 
wages ; and, without giving them any guar- 
anties of security, and without giving the 
new impetus a moral direction, they aggre- 
gated them in towns, and caused the evil of 
the excess of manufacturing labor from 
which the old country is suffering to-day far 
more acutely than has America at any period 
of her history. 

The English people, stimulated by the 



68 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

doctrines of a false political economy, placed 
too high an estimate upon the advantages 
to be derived from the acciunulation of 
wealth, and at the same time gave them- 
selves Httle inquietude in regard to the in- 
conveniences and evils residting from the 
sudden crowding of populations, subject to 
uneasiness, exposed to industrial instability, 
and impelled thereby to feehngs of oppo- 
sition irreconcilable with all social order. 
They did not perceive, nor did their econo- 
mists teach, as they will in the future, that, 
by a continuance of evils resulting from the 
extension of a vicious system involving the 
inviolabihty of contracts between employer 
and employe, wealth must, sooner or later, 
cease to be a power, and the existence of 
the most solid industrial State history pre- 
sents to us be compromised.* The seeming 
evils of this division of labor have been 
propagated both sides of the Atlantic by 
many writers, who, apparently ignorant of 
the truths history teaches as to the usages 
of prosperous places of labor, have persisted 

*Cf. Organization of Labor, Le Play. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 69 

in a systematic distinction between economic 
order and moral order. They have paid 
no regard to the reciprocal duties imposed 
by moral order upon employers and upon 
workmen. For example, they have assimi- 
lated the social laws, fixing the wages of 
workmen to the economic laws which regu- 
late the prices of goods and products ; and 
by this erroneous teaching they have intro- 
duced a germ of disorganization into the 
sphere of labor, and led proprietors every- 
where in too large a degree to hold them- 
selves no longer bound by conscience to 
regard the salutary obhgations imposed by 
moral order.* 

Later writers will correct, and are correct- 
ing, these false doctrines, but slowly, how- 
ever. 

In Mr. Herbert Spencer's work, The Data 
of Ethics, we are informed that "ethics 
comprehends the laws of right li\dngj and 
that, beyond the conduct commonly ap- 
proved or reprobated as right or wrong, it 
includes aU conduct which furthers or hin- 

* Organization of Labor, Le Play. 



70 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

ders, in direct or indirect ways, the welfare 
of self or others ; that justice, which formu- 
lates the range of conduct, and hmitations 
to conduct hence arising, is at once the most 
important division of ethics ; that it has to 
define the equitable relations among individ- 
uals who limit one another's spheres of ac- 
tion by co-existing, and who achieve their 
ends by co-operation ; and that, beyond jus- 
tice between man and man, justice between 
each man and the aggregate of men has to 
be dealt with by it." 

These are sound propositions, taken by 
themselves, no moral philosopher can for a 
moment reject, nor should they be rejected 
by economists; for a moment's reflection 
upon their bearing shows conclusively that 
material prosperity is best subserved by their 
incorporation as chapters in the laws of 
trade, commerce, and production. 

Are the principles I have endeavored 
to apply as belonging to the relations of 
political economy to the labor question 
the outgrowth of mere theory, or are 
they born of actual experiences, and do 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 71 

history and investigation teach their practi- 
cability ? 

History is bright with illustrations of the 
truth of the propositions laid down, — even 
history back of the century of mechanical 
progress. The story of feudal wrongs is 
reheved by the grand life of Saint Louis, 
who, in the thirteenth century, taught les- 
sons of moral obhgations which should exist 
between the lords and their followers the 
employers of to-day might well imitate. 

Forcible illustrations of prosperity result- 
ing from moral influence and a public virtue 
could be drawn from the times of Louis 
XIII. (1610-43), while the dechne of mate- 
rial prosperity as the practical resultant of 
immorality and profligacy became marked 
under Louis XIV. and Louis XV. (1661 and 
after). Later periods give frequent proof of 
the positions taken ; but I need not accmnu- 
late citations. I cannot, however, close 
without calling attention to the great prog- 
ress which has taken place, and to some of 
the experiments which have been made in 
this direction. One of the most prominent 



72 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

experiments in the Old World was carried 
out under the direction of Robert Owen at 
New Lanark before he became imbued with 
socialism. At the period of his Lanark 
experience (1819) Owen gained respect and 
renown in distant lands, was sought by the 
great, was consulted by governments, and 
counted among his patrons princes of the 
blood in England and more than one 
crowned head in Europe. The main cause 
of Owen's success began with the practical 
improvement of the working people under 
his superintendence as manager, and after- 
wards as owner, of the cotton-mills in New 
Lanark. He found liimseK surrounded by 
squalor and poverty, intemperance and 
crime, so common among the operatives of 
that day, and not quite unknown in our 
own. He determined to change the whole 
condition of affairs. He erected healthy 
dweUings with adjacent gardens, and let 
them at cost price to the people. He built 
stores where goods of proper quahty might 
be purchased at wholesale prices, and thus 
removed the truck system. To avoid the 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 73 

enonnoiis waste of separate cooking, he pro- 
vided dining-halls, where wholesome food 
might be obtained at reasonable prices. He 
established the first infant school in Great 
Britain. He excluded all under ten from the 
workshops, and made the physical and moral 
training of the young his special care. He 
adopted measures to put down drunkenness, 
and to encourage the savings of the people. 
The employes became attached to their em- 
ployer, took a personal interest in the success 
of the business, labored ably and conscien- 
tiously, and so made the mills of New 
Lanark, in Scotland, a great financial suc- 
cess, as did our own Lowell those on the 
Merrimack a few years later. Mr. Griscom, 
an American traveller, visited Owen's mills 
in 1819, and concludes a report upon them 
as follows : " There is not, I apprehend, to 
be found in any part of the world a manu- 
facturing village in which so much order, 
good government, tranquillity, and rational 
happiness prevail. It affords an eminent 
and instructive example of the good that 
may be effected by well-directed efforts to 



74 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

promote the real comfort, and, I may add, 
the morality of the laboring classes." 

"Thus one of these romantic valleys of 
the Clyde, which have been invested with 
the charm of poetry by Sir Walter Scott, 
had also been rendered the scene of ^an 
earthly paradise,' from a social point of 
view, by Robert Owen. Kings and emper- 
ors came to visit the model settlement, and 
returned with the conviction that the eleva- 
tion of the masses depends on the ready 
earnestness and self-denying sympathy of 
those who try to improve them." * 

Samuel Laing, an eminent traveller and 
social economist, writing in 1842 of the evils 
of the factory system of Great Britain, and 
quoting Chevalier, the French economist, 
who wrote from personal inspection, says : 
" Fortunately there is evidence to show that 
these are not necessary evils, and that, if 
a due regard be paid by those concerned to 
moral obHgations, the factory system may 
be made to work well. The instance of the 
American factories at Lowell, in the State of 

* Kauf inann. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 75 

Massachusetts, is decisive on this point." 
And, after describing the Lowell system, he 
asks, " Why is it not universal ? Because," 
he answers, " certain moral elements of the 
American system are wanting in the Eng- 
Hsh. . . . Instead of leaving things to shift 
for themselves, pubHc opinion and a sense 
of duty have made the employers of labor 
[at Lowell] responsible for the moral super- 
intendence of those belonging to their estab- 
hshments." These conditions, he further 
remarks, " shoidd make us pause before we 
set down the Americans as a nation of in- 
veterate dollar-hunters. In no country have 
the clauns of morality and himianity been so 
remorselessly sacrificed to the right of prop- 
erty as in England." * And he might have 
added, in no country has there been such 
bhnd following of a false notion which ex- 
cludes moral considerations from the science 
of political economy. 

The experience of the Briggs Brothers at 
their coUiery in England, of the Cheney 
Brothers at South Manchester, Conn., of the 

♦Laing's Notes of a Traveller, pp. 81, 82. 



76 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

Fairbanks Company in Vermont, of hun- 
dreds of others who have recognized the 
great fact of the Decalogue, testifies to the 
soundness of the doctrines which will be 
taught by the economists of the futui-e. 
When they are taught, and pohtical econ- 
omy is reunited with moral philosophy (from 
which it was divorced while a bride), we 
shall find the heartiest support given to the 
science by the producers of society in what- 
ever walk their lives may fall. Periods of 
depression, which formerly, in ages past, 
used to alternate with periods of prosperity 
on long sweeps, compassing a century, have 
gradually been reduced in the swing to 
shorter and shorter durations, so that now 
the oscillations are distinguished by half- 
decades of time. The growth of industrial 
ethics will continue to reduce the length of 
these periods, till we compass them within 
the year. This is one of the tangible steps 
in the progress of civihzation ; and no 
greater can be recorded, or one having more 
practical bearing upon the welfare and hap- 
piness of the people. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 77 

I have not been ambitious to promulgate 
these principles, or theories, with the idea 
they were to cure existing difficulties, or 
prevent the recurrence of past evils, but 
simply to make a new apphcation to the 
wants of the future industrial world of those 
principles which alone have been successful 
under like circumstances in the past; and 
they are in accord with the Decalogue, the 
surest platform for the labor question — 
which involves capitaHsts and laborers — 
to rest upon, and by which to insure success. 



m 

THE FACTORY AS AN ELEMENT 
IN CIVILIZATION. 



in 

THE FACTORY AS AN ELEMENT IN 
CIVILIZATION. 

A SUPERFICIAL study of the factory in 
almost any community leads to the con- 
clusion that it has a deteriorating influence 
upon the operative as well as upon the pop- 
ulation surrounding it, but this is only the 
superficial view. Managers of factories are 
perfectly familiar with the deeper, underly- 
ing ethical aspects of the question. Thirty 
years ago, before I began the investigation 
of social and economic conditions, I very 
naturally adopted the superficial view ; but 
as my investigations proceeded, and as I 
studied the real relation of the factory to 
common, every-day life, I was obHged to 
change my attitude. It is only natural that 
this superficial view shoidd obtain in the 
popular mind. Almost every writer, cer- 
tainly with rare exceptions, adopts the view 

81 



82 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

that the factory has been beneficial in a 
purely economic sense. Few are ready to 
adopt the idea that the factory has been of 
itself and through its own influence an ele- 
ment in civilization or an element in lifting 
up the social life of any of the people. 

The latter view results from a superficial 
study, as I have said, and also from an in- 
verted vision. The glamour which sur- 
rounded the factory in the early days of its 
establishment in this country has led to very 
many erroneous conclusions. Some of us 
remember, and all of us have heard of, the 
Lowell factory girls, and the intellectual 
standard which they attained. Then, look- 
ing to the present textile factory operatives 
in different parts of the country, the com- 
parison becomes very sharp and the con- 
clusion apparently decisive. In making this 
comparison, however, the real conditions of 
the factory in the early days at Lowell, 
when the factory girls edited their own lit- 
erary magazine, which achieved high rank 
everywhere, are not clearly recognized. The 
then existing prejudice of England against 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 83 

the factory was well known here ; and man- 
agers who built their factories in this coun- 
try at that tinie were obliged, therefore, to 
offer attractive wages as well as attractive 
environment, and by such offers they drew 
into Eastern factories the daughters of the 
New England farmers and a high grade of 
EngHsh girls. 

In speaking and writing of this period I 
have often called attention to my own recol- 
lections, and such recollections are just those 
which have led to false conclusions. My 
first teacher was a weaver in the factories at 
Lowell, Biddeford, and Salem. She was a 
writer on the Lowell Offering, the factory 
girls' publication, and a contemporary of 
Lucy Larcom and the other noble women 
who worked in the cotton-miUs of those 
days. 

A change came over the industrial con- 
dition, however, and the American and 
English girls were forced out of the factory 
through economic influences ; but they were 
not forced downward in the scale of life. 
They were crowded out, but up into higher 



84 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

callings. They became the wives of fore- 
men and superintendents, teachers in the 
common schools, clerks in stores and count- 
ing-rooms ; and they lost nothing whatever 
by their life and services in the factory. 
The lower grade of operatives that succeeded 
them brought the sharp comparison which 
led to the conclusion that the factory is 
degrading. The women who came in then 
were very largely Irish girls, fresh and raw 
immigrants, from the poorer and less devel- 
oped localities of Ireland. Taking the places 
of the English and American girls in the 
Eastern factories, they soon began to im- 
prove their condition ; and the result was 
that they in turn were crowded out by an- 
other nationality. But the Irish girl did 
not retrograde. She progressed, as had her 
predecessors, and enhsted in higher occupa- 
tions. The daughters of the original Irish 
factory operatives and scrub-women who 
came to this country were no longer factory 
operatives and scrub-women. They were to 
be foimd standing behind the counters of 
our great retail shops, well dressed, educated 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 85 

in our schools, bright, active, and industri- 
ous, and with a moral character equal to that 
of their predecessors. 

The war period created the necessity of 
an increased number of factory operatives, 
and brought into our mills a great body of 
French-Canadian women. The opposition 
in the New England States to the presence 
of the French-Canadians was as great as it 
ever had been against the coming of the 
Irish. The opposition to the Irish had 
ceased : it was transferred to the French- 
Canadians ; but I venture to say that there 
never has been a nationality coming into 
the United States that has shown such great 
progress in the same period of time as have 
the French-Canadians. They are now grad- 
uating from the factory, the Swedes, the 
Greeks, and others coming in ; and the fac- 
tory is performing the same civilizing opera- 
tion for the new quotas that it has always 
performed for the others. It is reaching 
down and down to the lower strata of soci- 
ety, and lifting them up to a higher standard 
of living. 



86 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

Now we are in the presence of another 
experiment, or experience, rather, which 
teaches the soundness of the view I am try- 
ing to convey, and that experience is in the 
South. When the American girls left the 
factories of New England, foreigners took 
their places. The establishment of the 
textile factory in the South led to the em- 
plo3Tiient of a body of native people — those 
born and bred in the South, popularly known 
as the poor whites — who up to the time of 
the erection of cotton-factories had lived a 
precarious existence, and always in antag- 
onism to the colored people, looking upon 
work as rather degrading than otherwise, 
because of the peculiar institution of the 
South, and on the whole not constituting 
a very desirable element in Southern popu- 
lation. To-day these people are furnishing | 
the textile factories of the Southern States 
with a class of operatives not surpassed in ' 
any part of the country. This is the testi- 
mony of the late Mr. Dingley in a speech 
in the House of Representatives. It is the 
testimony of English manufacturers who 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 87 

have carefully studied the conditions in the 
South ; and the testimony from all sources 
is to the effect that the poor whites of the 
South are entering the cotton-mills as an 
opportunity which had never before been 
open to them. They are becoming indus- 
trious and saving in theii" habits ; and, com- 
ing to the factory towns, they bring their 
families, and they in turn are brought into 
an environment entirely different from that 
under which they were reared. They are 
now able to educate their children, — to 
bring them up in a way which was never 
possible to them before ; and thus the poor 
whites of the South are gradually, and with 
more or less rapidity, becoming not only a 
desirable, but a valuable, element in South- 
ern population, on which the integrity and 
prosperity of a great industry largely depend. 
The experience in the South is simply that 
of other locaHties, whether in this country or 
in England. The factory means education, 
enhghtenment, and an intellectual develop- 
ment utterly impossible without it, — I mean 
to a class of people who could not reach 



88 S03IE ETHICAL PHASES 

these things in any other way. It is an ele- 
ment in social life. By its educational influ- 
ences it is constantly lifting the people from 
a lower to a higher grade. 

When the textile factory was originally 
established in England, it took into its em- 
ployment the children of agricidtural dis- 
tricts, — paupers, charity boys and girls. 
Much was said about the degradation of the 
factory children. Parliamentary investiga- 
tions and reports bewailed the conditions 
found, but it was forgotten in every instance 
that the factory really hfted these children 
out of a condition far worse than that in 
which the parliamentary committee found 
them when employed in the factories. We 
have had no such conditions to contend 
with in this country, but we have this super- 
ficial idea with which to contend. The no- 
tion that the factory creates ignorance, vice, 
and low tendencies is absolutely false. It 
does bring together a large body of compar- 
atively ignorant persons. It congregates 
these persons into one community, and 
hence the results of ignorance and of lower 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 89 

standards of life become clearly apparent 
because of the concentration. Before the 
concentration the ignorance existed precisely 
the same, but was diffused, and hence not 
apparent. 

These contentions can be fully sustained 
by a brief historical discussion of the fac- 
tory system of labor, in which the ethical 
elements of its inception and growth consti- 
tute an interesting study. 

One of the most attractive departments of 
human knowledge is what may be denomi- 
nated the evolution of industrial forces. 
The progress of the systems of labor gives 
to science a field for the practical applica- 
tion of the doctrines of evolution, entirely 
relieved from the abstract philosophical dis- 
tinctions which, in greater or less degree, 
surround those doctrines when applied to 
growth in other departments. 

The philosophy of history will take into 
account the vital elements of industrial 
forces in all their grand development as 
important factors in shaping civilization 
itself, as well as in shaping the commercial 



90 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

policy of nations in theii* relations to each 
other. 

It is to be regretted, however, that his- 
tory, as it is generally constructed, takes but 
Httle account of such forces ; and he who 
woidd understand the intimate connections 
of apparently diverse interests in their in- 
fluence upon the estabHshment of industrial 
systems must do so upon the basis of his 
own studies, expecting and receiving but 
httle aid from the historians. 

The influences which led to the institu- 
tion of the factory system are as diverse in 
their nature, almost, as the ramifications of 
the system itself. These influences, how- 
ever, are not shrouded in any mystery, but 
are clearly defined ; and their power, not 
only abstractly, but concretely, is fully recog- 
nizable in the origin of the system. 

The factory system is of recent origin, 
and is entirely the creation of influences ex- 
isting or coming into existence during the 
last half of the eighteenth century. These 
influences were both direct and subtle in 
their character, but all-important in their 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 91 

place and in theii- combination. As a great 
fact, the system originated in no precon- 
ceived plan, nor did it spring from any 
spasmodic exercise of human wisdom. On 
the contrary, " it was formed and shaped by 
the irresistible force of circumstances, fortu- 
nately aided and guided by men who were 
able to profit by circumstances." * To bor- 
row the expression of Cooke Taylor, . . . 
" Those who were called the fathers of the 
system were not such demons as they have 
sometimes been described, nor yet were they 
perfect angels. They were smiply men of 
great intelhgence, industry, and enterprise. 
They have bequeathed the system to this age, 
with the imperfections incident to every 
hiunan institution ; and the task of harmon- 
izing their innovation with existing institu- 
tions, and with the true spirit of righteous- 
ness, belongs really to the great employers of 
labor rather than to the professed teachers 
of morahty. It is too late to inquire whether 
the system ought or ought not to have been 
established ; for established it is, and estab- 

* Taylor's Factory System, pp. 1-11. 



92 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

lished it will remain in spite of all the 
schemes of the socialists or the insane pana- 
ceas of quack economists." * 

In its origin the factory system found its 
appHcation in the textile trades of England ; 
and we are very apt now, when the term is 
used, to confine it in our minds to the pro- 
duction of cotton and woollen goods, al- 
though it has in reahty embraced nearly all 
lines of the products of machinery. 

A factory is an estabhshment where sev- 
eral workmen are collected together for the 
purpose of obtaining greater and cheaper 
conveniences for labor than they could pro- 
cure individually at their homes, for pro- 
ducing results by their combined efforts 
which they could not accompHsh separately, 
and for saving the loss of time which the 
carrying of an article from place to place 
during the several processes necessary to 
complete its manufacture would occasion. 

The principle of a factory is that each 
laborer, working separately, is controlled by 
some associating principle which directs his 

* Cf . Taylor's Dedication to Factory System. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 93 

producing powers to effect a common result, 
which it is the object of all collectively to 
attain. 

Factories are, therefore, the legitimate 
outgrowth of the universal tendency to asso- 
ciation which is inherent in our nature, and 
by the development of which every advance 
in human improvement and hiunan happi- 
ness has been gained. 

The first force which tended to create this 
system was that of invention, and the stimu- 
lus to this grew out of the difficulty the 
weavers experienced in obtaining a sufficient 
supply of yarn to keep their looms in opera- 
tion. 

Invention, paradoxical as it may seem, had 
really aggravated the difficulty by a device 
for facilitating the process of weaving. I 
have reference to the fly shuttle, invented in 
1738 by John Kay. By this device one 
man alone was enabled to weave the widest 
cloth, while prior to Kay's invention two 
persons were required. 

One can readily see how this increased the 
difficulty of obtaining a supply of yarn ; for 



94 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

the one-tliread wheel, though turning from 
morning till night in thousands of cottages, 
could not keep pace either with the weaver's 
shuttle or with the demand of the merchant.* 

In 1738 the very first gleams of the gen- 
ius which v/as to remove the difficulties were 
discovered, and wings were given to a manu- 
facture which had heen creeping on the 
earth. An elementary mechanical contriv- 
ance was invented wherehy a single pair of 
hands could spin twenty, a hundred, or even 
one thousand threads. I need not discuss 
the details of the various inventions which 
culminated in a grand constellation of me- 
chanical devices as perfect and as wonderful 
as any class of inventions, and which have 
influenced the world in a deeper sense than 
any other save printing. 

It is true that, when this admirable series 
of machines was made known, and by then' 
means yarns were produced far superior in 
quality to any before spun in England, as 
well as lower in price, a mighty impulse was 
given to the cotton manufactiu*e. 

*Baine3's History of the Cotton Manufacture, p. 117. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 95 

It was an impulse, however ; and the in- 
ventions would not have brought their full- 
est fruition without the powerful influences 
which came into existence through events 
which have not usually been considered in 
this connection, but which are as legitimate 
in considering what I have called the evolu- 
tion of industrial forces as the inventions 
themselves, which simply constitute the ini- 
tiatory outgrowth of such evolution. 

While the processes of production had be- 
come in England more efficient through the 
invention of spinning-machines, whereby the 
weavers were kept busy and allowed no rest, 
it was only where a stream gave force to 
turn a mill-wheel that the spinner or the 
wool-worker could establish his factory ; 
while, if this difficulty even had not existed, 
the inefficiency of distribution woidd have 
rendered useless, to a large degree, a greatly 
augmented production. 

Mr. Green, in his History of the English 
People, speaking of the decade beginning 
with 1760, remarks : "The older main roads, 
which had lasted fairly through the Middle 



96 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

Ages, had broken down in later times before 
the growth of traffic and the increase of 
waofons and carriag-es. The new lines of 
trade lay often along mere country lanes 
which had never been more than horse- 
tracks, and to drive heavy trains through 
lanes like these was all but impossible. 
Much of the woollen trade, therefore, had to 
be carried on by means of long trains of 
pack-horses. ... In the case of yet heavier 
goods, such as coal, distribution was almost 
impracticable, save along. the greater rivers 
or in districts accessible from the sea." But, 
at the time when Hargreaves and Arkwright 
were strug-g-linof to make their inventions 
available, the enterprise of a duke and the 
ingenuity of a millwright not only solved the 
problem of distribution, which the trade of 
the country was forcing upon England, and 
which improved cotton machinery was sure 
to complicate, but they paved the way, by 
constructing canals, for the greatest applica- 
tion of the steam-engine, which could not 
have played its part in estabhshmg the fac- 
tory system without means of distributing 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 97 

coal ; and the system itself, without the steam 
engine, would have been a feeble institution.* 

England at once seized on the discovery 
of the canal as the means by which to free 
herself from the bondage in which she had 
been held. "From the year 1767 a net- 
work of water-roads was flung over the 
country ; and, before the movement had 
spent its force, Great Britain alone was trav- 
ersed in every direction by three thousand 
miles of navigable canals." 

The free and cheap distribution of coal 
and iron at once became an important fac- 
tor, — in fact, the chief material element in 
the development of the factory system ; and 
now for the first time in the history of civiH- 
zation a new motive power became indispen- 
sable to growth. For " what was needed to 
turn England into a manufacturing country 
was some means of transforming the force " 
of the sun " stored up in coal into a labor 
force ; and it was this transformation which 
was brought about through the agency of 
steam." t 

* CJreen, vol. i. p. 279. t Green. 



98 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

The location of mills upon streams of 
water was no longer a physical necessity. 
They could be built and run near large 
towns, where they could be fed from the 
crowded population. The influence of this 
chano"© of location has been the cause of 

o 

most of the so-called factory evils. 

The power-loom closed the catalogue of 
machines essential for the inauguration of 
the era of mechanical supremacy. What in- 
ventions will come during the continuance 
of that era cannot be predicted, for we are 
still at the beginning of the age of in- 
vention. The wonderful results of its first 
twenty years of life are sufficient to indicate 
something of the future. 

When the period of which I have spoken, 
the score of years from 176.5 to 1785, had 
closed, England found herself possessed of 
powers which needed only the support of 
the silent forces of the nation to carry her 
to the very highest point in industrial su- 
premacy. 

Inventions were the material forces, pow- 
erful, indeed, as agents in building the fac- 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 99 

tory system. What were the spiritual forces, 
so to speak? The inner, subtle, but also 
powerful agencies at work to render the ma- 
terial forces successful ? A body without a 
spirit is but dead matter. This is certamly 
true, in one sense, of all the mechanical 
bodies which have served as expressions of 
mind. A machine is really embodied action. 
A grand combination of inventions must em- 
body not only all the actions represented, 
but the spirit of the age ; for without this 
they are powerless. 

WhUe the inventions of which I have 
spoken were being perfected, Adam Smith 
was working out his memorable Inquiry into 
the Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 
When he was lecturing with applause, in 
Glasgow, from the chair of Moral Philoso- 
phy, James Watt was selling mathematical 
instriunents in an obscure shop within the 
precincts of the same university, and was 
working out his inquiry into the practicable 
methods of applying steam. 

It may seem as if no two departments of 
human thought were more widely separated 



100 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

than those in which these two men were en- 
gaged. One was a region purely mental, 
the other purely physical. The one had 
reference to the laws of mind, the other to 
the laws of matter ; and yet the work of 
Adam Smith and that of James Watt were 
inseparably connected, not only as involving 
analogous methods of investigation, but as 
showing in their result the blending and co- 
operation of mental and material laws.* 

Dr. Smith treated of the philosophy of 
trade, and by his j)hilosophy prepared the 
EngHsh mind to receive for England's bene- 
fit the commercial results not only of her 
inventions, but of her losses from the war 
with her colonies, and the diversion of her 
slave-trade capital. 

Adam Smith published his work in 1776, 
and during the seven years of strife with 
this country his doctrines had taken silent 
and almost unobserved possession of the 
minds of the thinking men of England ; so 
that at the close of the war it was not diffi- 
cult to turn the thoughts of manufacturers 

* Duke of Argyle, Reign of Law, p. 339. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 101 

and merchants to the industrial possibilities 
of Great Britain. 

Guizot remarked that " England's liberties 
are owing to her having been conquered by 
the Normans." The truth of this statement 
is easily discernible under the light of the 
philosophy of history. It is also true, to a 
great extent, that England owes her indus- 
trial supremacy to the loss of her American 
colonies. 

With the close of the war, the industry 
of England was exerted to its fullest power 
in the task of supplying the world with cot- 
ton goods. She flooded America with cheap 
goods, and demoralized our merchants and 
our people, and actually drove them into a 
fever for foreign goods. The capital of 
England, released by the war, was free to 
engage in industrial and commercial enter- 
prises ; and well did the business brains of 
the country apply the doctrines of the Glas- 
gow economist. But a stranger power than 
war, or the pauperism of agricultural dis- 
tricts, from which the factories were largely 
suppHed with cheap labor, was added to the 



102 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

combination of forces essential to the estab- 
lisment of a new industrial order. Disgrace- 
fid and tedious as had been the contest with 
the colonies, the years devoted to it were 
years of as grand and mighty a revolution 
for the mother as for the child. * This rev- 
olution took the shape of a great moral and 
rehgious power, which seemed to roU with- 
out obstacle over the land, changing the 
politics of the country and changing the 
directions of the employment of active cap- 
ital. 

The religious revival work of the Wesleys 
brought a nobler result than mere rehgious 
enthusiasm. A philanthropic impulse grew 
out of the Wesleyan impulse. The writings 
and the personal example of Hannah More 
drew the sympathy of England to the pov- 
erty and crime of the agricultural laborer. 
A passionate impidse of human sympathy 
with the wronged and the oppressed grew 
with amazing strength, and under its influ- 
ence Clarkson and Wilberforce were sus- 
tained in their crusade against the iniquity 

* Green. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 103 

of the slave trade. This grand enthusiasm 
carried Howard through the moral chivalry 
of his labors ; so each and all who sought 
the elevation of the oppressed thus gave a 
shot at the slave trade either directly or in- 
directly, for all helped to create the public 
sentiment which insisted upon its abolition. 
"Half the wealth of Liverpool was drawn 
from the ti-afiic of its merchants in human 
flesh." * 

As the spirit of humanity told upon the 
people, apathy suddenly disappeared. Phi- 
lanthropy aUied itself with the Wesleyan 
movement in an attack on the slave trade. 
The first assaults were repidsed by the oppo- 
sition of the merchants, who argued that the 
abohtion of the trade meant their ruin. But 
the movement gathered strength from year 
to year, and the traffic was suppressed ; and 
the vast amount of capital employed in it 
was forced into new channels, and naturally 
into commercial and industrial enterprises. 

The philosophy of these events in their 
relation to the estabhshment of the factory 

* Green. 



104 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

system cannot be denied. To be sure, inven- 
tion alone would in time have succeeded in 
instituting the new system, but not for gen- 
erations upon an enduring basis. 

It requii'ed all the forces I have con- 
sidered — physical, mental, philosophical, 
commercial, and philanthropical, working in 
separate yet convergent lines — to lay the 
foundation of an entirely new system of in- 
dustry ; and these forces coming into exist- 
ence during the twenty years following the 
success of the efforts of Hargreaves and 
Arkwright, and extending in their wonder- 
ful influences over the earth wherever civili- 
zation has a foothold, constitutes that period 
one of the most remarkable since the Chris- 
tian era. In fact, no generation since then 
has so completely stamped itself upon the 
affairs of the world. 

England at the close of the Revolution 
held, as she supposed, the key to the indus- 
trial world in cotton manufactures. Certainly, 
she held the machinery without which such 
manufactures could not be carried on in 
competition with her own mills. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 105 

The planting of the mechanic arts in this 
country became a necessity during the war 
of the Revolution ; and afterwards the spirit 
of American enterprise demanded that New 
England, at least, with her barren soil, should 
improve the privileges she did possess, which 
were water-power and skill. 

Of course, most industries whose products 
were called for by the necessities of the 
war were greatly stimulated ; but with peace 
came reaction, and the flooding of our mar- 
kets with foreign goods. A new patriotism, 
which sought industrial as well as poHtical 
independence of the mother country, re- 
sulted in the new constitution, the second 
act under which was passed Jidy 4, 1789, 
with this preamble : " Whereas it is neces- 
sary for the support of the government, for 
the discharge of the debts of the United 
States, and for the encouragement and the 
protection of manufactures that duties be 
laid on goods, wares, and merchandises im- 
ported, be it enacted," etc. 

Patriotism and statute law thus paved the 
way for the importation of the factory sys- 



106 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

tern of labor, and so its institution here as 
well as in England was the result of both 
moral and economic forces. These forces, 
existing at the time of the coming of Samuel 
Slater, the father of American manufactures, 
as President Jackson designated him, made 
Slater's work a success; and his success 
firmly estabhshed the factory system in this 
country. Slater came in 1789, equipped 
with the knowledge of the manufacture of 
cotton-machinery gained as an apprentice to 
Arkwright himself. He constructed the 
machinery for a small mill in Rhode Island 
in 1790, from which period the progress in 
the establishment of factory manufactures 
was uninterrupted save by temporary causes. 

From the textile industries the system has 
extended to almost all branches of produc- 
tion, till a large proportion of all manufac- 
tured articles in use to-day in civilized coun- 
tries are factory-made ; and yet one-half the 
population of the globe is still clothed with 
hand-made fabrics. 

The statistics of the industries of Great 
Britain and the United States are the sta- 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 107 

tistics of industries conducted under the 
system. 

In France, Germany, and Belgium the 
system predominates, although the domestic 
system of labor in these countries has con- 
tinued to exist to considerable extent. 

The new system, which has found its 
most rapid extension in the United States, 
has enabled the manufacturers of this coun- 
try, with our wonderful stores of raw ma- 
terials at hand, to become the successful 
rivals in the mechanic arts of any country 
that desires to compete vnih them. 

It has changed the conditions of masses 
of people. It has become an active element 
in the processes of civilization, and has 
changed the character of legislation and 
of national poHcy everywhere. 

Is this great, powerful, and growing sys- 
tem a power for good or for evil ? Does it 
mean the elevation of the race or its retro- 
gression ? 

When we speak of civilization, we have in 
mind the progress of society toward a more 
perfect state, as indicated by the growth of 



108 SOME ETHICAL PUASES 

a long period of time. We do not simply 
contemplate specific reforms or especial evils, 
but the trend of aU social influences. 

When we speak of the factory system, we 
are apt to let our thoughts dwell upon the 
evils that we know or imagine belong to it. 
This is certainly true when civilization and 
the factory system are suggested in the same 
sentence. This is wrong, for we should con- 
template the factory system in its general 
influence upon society, and especially upon 
that portion of society most intimately con- 
nected Avith the factory. 

My position is that the system has been 
and is a most potent element in promoting 
civilization. I assume, of course, — and the 
assumption is in entire harmony with my 
thoughts, — that the civilization of the twen- 
tieth century will be better than that of the 
eiofhteenth and nineteenth. 

We hear a great deal about the sweating 
system, and the popular idea is that the 
sweating system is the product of modern 
industrial conditions. The fact is that it is 
a remnant of the old industrial system. It 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 109 

is the old hand system prior to the establish- 
ment of the factory, and has been projected 
into our time. Once universal, the sweating 
system is now limited to one or two indus- 
tries, and is gradually being eliminated 
through the very system which is sometimes 
condemned. Just as fast as the sweat-shops 
are developed into the factory, and brought 
under the laws which relate to factory regu- 
lation, just so rapidly is the sweating system 
being eliminated. The only cure is to make 
of the sweat-shop the factory. The social 
life of sweaters can be improved only by lift- 
ing them to the grade of factory operatives. 
An examination into the conditions exist- 
ing under the factory system, and those of 
the domestic or individual system which pre- 
ceded it, fully sustains this position. 

None of the systems of labor which ex- 
isted prior to the present, or factory system, 
was particularly conducive to a higher civi- 
lization. Wages have been paid for ser- 
vices rendered since the wants of men in- 
duced one to serve another, yet the wage 
system is of recent origin as a svstem. It 



110 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

arose out of the feudal system of labor, and 
was the first fruits of the efforts of men to 
free themselves from viUemage. The origin 
of the wage system cannot be given a birth- 
day as can the factory system. It is true, 
however, that the wage system rendered the 
factory system possible, and they have since 
grown together. The first may give way to 
some other method for dividing the profits 
of production ; but the factory system, per- 
fected, must, whether under sociaHstic or 
whatever political system, remain until dis- 
integration is the rule in society. 

The feudal and slave systems had nothing 
in them, so far as any progressive elements 
were concerned, from which society could 
draw the forces necessary to growth. On 
the contrary, while modern civihzation owes 
much to the feudal system, and slavery was 
in its origin a great step in civilization, these 
systems reflected the most depressing influ- 
ences, and were in great measure the aUies 
of retrogression. 

The domestic system, which claims the 
eighteenth century almost entirely, was woven 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 111 

into the two systems which existed before 
and came after it. In fact, it has not yet 
disappeared. 

It is simple fact, however, when we say 
that the factory system set aside the domestic 
system of industry. It is idyllic sentiment 
when we say that the domestic system sur- 
passed the former, and nothing but senti- 
ment. 

There is something poetic in the idea of 
the weaver of old England, before the spin- 
ning machinery was invented, working at his 
loom in his cottage, with his family about 
him, some carding, others spinning the wool 
or the cotton for the weaver ; and writers 
and speakers are constantly bewailing the 
departure of such scenes. 

I am well aware that I speak against popu- 
lar impression, and largely against popidar 
sentiment, when I assert that the factory sys- 
tem in every respect is vastly superior as an 
element in civilization to the domestic system 
which preceded it ; that the social and moral 
influences of the present outshine the social 
and moral influences of the old. The hue 



112 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

and cry against the prevailing system has not 
been entirely genuine on either side of the 
Atlantic. Abuses have existed, great and 
abominable enough, but not equal to those 
which have existed in the imagination of 
men who would have us beheve that virtue 
is something of the past. 

The usual mistake is to consider the fac- 
tory system as the creator of evils, and not 
only evils, but of evil-disposed persons. 
This can hardly be shown to be true, al- 
though it is that the system may congregate 
evils or evil-disposed persons, and thus give 
the appearance of creating that which 
already existed. 

It is difficult, I know, to establish close 
comparisons of the conditions under the two 
systems, because they are not often found to 
be contemporaneous; yet sufficient evidence 
will be adduced, I think, from a considera- 
tion of the features of the two, and which 
I am able to present, to estabhsh the truth 
of my assertions. 

Do not construe what I say against the 
domestic system of industry as in the least 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 113 

antagonistic to the family, for I am one of 
those who believe that its integrity is the 
integrity of the nation ; that the sacredness 
of its compacts is the sacredness and the 
preservation and the extension of the race ; 
that the inviolability of its purity and its 
peace is the most emphatic source of anxiety 
of law-makers; and that any tendency, 
whether societary or political, toward its 
decay or even toward its disrespect deserves 
the immediate condemnation and active 
opposition of all citizens as the leading 
cause of irreHofion and of national disinte- 
gration. 

It should not be forgotten that " the term 
factory system, in technology, designates 
the combined operation of many orders of 
work-people ... in tending with assiduous 
skill a series of productive machines contin- 
ually propelled by a central power. This 
definition includes such organizations as cot- 
ton-mills, flax-mills, silk and woollen miUs, and 
many other works ; but it excludes those in 
which the mechanisms do not form a con- 
nected series, nor are dependent on one 



114 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

prime mover." It involves in its strictest 
sense " the idea of a vast automatum, com- 
posed of various mechanical and intellectual 
organs, acting in uninterrupted concert for 
the production of a common object, all of 
them being subordinated to a self-regulated 
movmof force." * 

So a factory becomes a scientific structure, 
its parts harmonious, the calculations requi- 
site for their harmony involving the highest 
mathematical skill; and in the factory the 
operative is always the master of the machine, 
and never the machine the master of the 
operative. 

Under the domestic system of industry 
grew up that great pauper class in England, 
which was a disgrace to civilization. It was 
fed by the agricidtural districts more than 
by those devoted to manufactures. It con- 
i tinned to grow until one-fourth of the 
j annual budget was for the support of pau- 
pers. The evil became fixed upon the social 
life as one of its permanent phases. Legis- 
lation, philanthropy, charity, were utterly 

*Dr. Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures, p. 13. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 115 

powerless in checking it; and it was not 
checked till the inventions in cotton manu- 
factures came, since which events it has been 
on the dechne, taking the decades together. 
The factory absorbed many who had been 
under pubHc support. On the other hand, it 
drew from the peasantry by the allurements 
of better wages, and without any guaranties 
as to permanency or care as to moral respon- 
sibility ; yet on the whole the state was bene- 
fited more than any class was injured. 

The domestic laborer's home, instead of 
being the poetic one, was far from the char- 
acter poetry has given it. Huddled together 
in what poetry calls a cottage, and histoiy a 
hut, the weaver's family lived and worked, 
without comfort, conveniences, good food, 
good air, and without much uiteUigence. 
Drunkenness and theft of materials made 
each home the scene of crime and want and 
disorder. Superstition ruled and envy swayed 
the workers. If the members of a family 
endowed with more virtue and inteUigence 
than the common herd tried to so conduct 
themselves as to secure at least self-respect. 



116 S03IE ETHICAL PHASES 

they were either abused or ostracized by 
their neighbors. The ignorance under the 
old system added to the squalor of the homes 
under it, and what all these elements failed 
to produce in making the hut an actual den 
was faithfully performed, in too many in- 
stances, by the swine of the family. 

The home of the ao^ricultural laborer was 
not much better ; in fact, in Great Britain 
and France he has been exceedingly suc- 
cessfid in maintaining his ignorance and his 
degraded condition. 

Sentiment has done much, as I have said, 
to create false impressions as to the two 
systems of labor. Goldsmith's Auburn and 
Crabbe's Village hardly reflect the truest 
picture of their country's home life. 

The reports of the Poor Laws Commis- 
sioners of England are truer exponents of 
conditions, and show whether the town was 
during the first fifty years of the new sys- 
tem staining the country or the country the 
town. " From the dociunents published by 
these commissioners it appears that, but for 
the renovating influence of her manufac- 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 117 

tures, England would have been overrun 
with the most ignorant and depraved of men 
to be met with where civilization has made 
much progress. It has been in the factory dis- 
tricts alone that the demoralizing agency of 
pauperism has been most effectually resisted, 
and a noble spirit of industry, enterprise, 
and iQteUigence called forth." * Agricult- 
urists gave children and youth no more 
than half the wages paid them in factories, 
while they filled the workhouses with the 
unemployed. Under the operation of the 
miserable poor laws, which the domestic sys- 
tem fathered, the peasantry were penned up 
in close parishes, where they increased be- 
yond the demand for their labor, and where 
the children were allowed to grow up in 
laziness and ignorance, which unfitted them 
from ever becoming industrious men and 
women. 

But in the chief manufacturing districts, 
while the condition of the factory children 
became the subject of legislation for pro- 
tection, their condition was one to be envied 

*Ure, p. 354. 



118 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

beside that of the children in mining and 
agricultural districts. 

The spasmodic nature of work under the 
domestic system caused much disturbance, 
for hand working is always more or less dis- 
continuous from the caprice of the operative, 
while much time must be lost in gathering 
and returning materials. For these and 
obvious reasons a hand weaver could very 
seldom turn off in a week much more than 
one-half what his loom coidd produce if 
kept continuously in action during the 
working hours of the day, at the rate which 
the weaver in his working paroxysms im- 
pelled it.* 

The regular order maintained in the fac- 
tory cures this evil of the old system, and 
enables the operative to know with reason- 
able certainty the wages he is to receive at 
the next pay day. His life and habits be- 
come more orderly ; and he finds, too, that, 
as he has left the closeness of his home shop 
for the usually clean and weU-Hghted factory, 
he imbibes more freely of the health-giving 

*Ure, p. 333. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 119 

tonic of the atmosphere. It is commonly 
supposed that cotton-factories are crowded 
with operatives. From the nature of things, 
the spinning and weaving rooms cannot be 
crowded. The spinning-mules, in their 
advancing and retreating locomotion, must 
have five or six times the space to work in 
that the actual bulk of the mechanism re- 
quires ; and, where the machinery stands, the 
operative cannot. In the weaving-rooms 
there can be no crowding of persons. Dur- 
ing the agitation for factory legislation in 
the early part of the last century it was 
remarked before a committee of the House 
of Commons " that no part of a cotton-mill 
is one-tenth part as crowded, or the air in it 
one-tenth part as impure, as the House of Com- 
mons with a moderate attendance of mem- 
bers." * This is true to-day. The poorest 
factory in this country is as good a place to 
breathe in as Representatives HaU during 
sessions, or the ordinary school-room. In 
this respect the new system of labor far 
surpasses the old. 

*Ure, p. 402. 



120 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

Bad air is one of the surest influences to 
intemperance, and it is clearly susceptible of 
proof that intemperance does not exist and 
has not existed to such alarming degrees 
under the new as under the old system. 
Certainly, the influence of bad air has not 
been as potent. 

The regularity required in miUs is such as 
to render persons who are in the habit of 
getting intoxicated unfit to be employed 
there, and many manufacturers object to em- 
ploying persons guilty of the vice. Yet, not- 
withstanding all the efforts which have been 
made to stop the habit, the beer-drinking 
operatives of factory towns stiQ constitute a 
most serious drawback to the success of in- 
dustrial enterprises ; but its effects are not so 
ruinous under the new as under the old sys- 
tem. 

At Amiens, France, the two systems were 
in existence, side by side and in full force, 
in 1860, and are now to considerable extent. 
From the investigations of Reybaud, it is 
shown that the domestic system exists in the 
country around Amiens, while the factory 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 121 

system prevails in the city itself. The 
country workers have had a very bad reputa- 
tion. The evil of intemperance is invet- 
erate. 

" The people living under the old system 
resisted improvement. They wished to Uve 
and die in the houses of their parents, and 
expressed no desire to leave them." The 
ffreat mass of these workers were at home, 
even at a date as late as 1860, under a roof 
that was never abandoned. The investiga- 
tion just referred to proves that the homes 
of the factory workers were incontestably 
better than those of the home workers, for 
they were free from the inciunbrances and 
clogging influences which existed when the 
means and materials for manufacture dis- 
puted with the necessities of housekeeping 
for a great part of the room. This differ- 
ence in the houses under the two systems is 
also the result of circumstances easily ex- 
plained. The factory workers as a rule earn 
more than the home workers. By having 
fixed and regular hours, they are kept from 
falling into habits of idleness. They know 



122 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

to a centime what they will have at the end 
of the week. Their dependence is their se- 
curity. Their wages have the merit of 
steadiness. The condition of the home 
workers is precarious. Weeks and months 
pass at times, and they out of work. Finan- 
cial crises, derangements of commerce, 
change in fashion, — all these affect them 
far more seriously than they do the factory 
people. To-morrow is never sure with the 
workers under the domestic system, and pri- 
vation in the future is always staring them 
in the face. All these bad conditions are 
aggravated by the serious intemperance of 
the home workers about Amiens. 

There are no heads of estabHshments to 
influence these men. They occupy an inde- 
pendent and really an isolated position. 
Under the factory system in France, intem- 
perance is often dealt with effectually, and 
the first honor belongs to the heads of the 
establishments. By concerted action, which 
should be taken for example, they closed 
their doors against those addicted to intem- 
perance, and where drunkenness marked 



OF TUE LABOR QUESTION 123 

them as the ones to be excluded. Efforts 
were made to secure pledges, and with suc- 
cess. To-day drimkenness is not an obsta- 
cle to the success of manufacturing estab- 
lishments either in this country or in 
England. 

In this country the proprietors of factories 
have taken a position in regard to intemper- 
ance, in many instances, which reflects the 
highest honor upon them. Many years ago 
at York Mills, in Maine, Mr. Samuel Batch- 
elder, the agent, issued regulations prohibit- 
ing the use of intoxicants by the operatives. 
When his example is followed generally, we 
shall have less of the beer-shop in factory 
towns. 

The statistics of crime usually offer evi- 
dence of the tendencies of different classes 
in a community. In studying these statistics 
for large manufacturing centres in Great 
Britain, I have found that neither the crimi- 
nal ranks nor the ranks of prostitution are 
fiUed up from the factories. Much has been 
said about Manchester, England, and its 
"hoodlum" class cited as the operative pop- 



124 S03IE ETHICAL PHASES 

Illation. Nothing could be farther from the 
truth. It is the miserable hovel tenantry 
outside the factory workers which makes 
Manchester's criminal list so large. 

The common mistake writers have made 
is in taking a place like Manchester by 
which to judge the factory system. Man- 
chester is not purely a factory town. Visi- 
tors make the double blunder of believing 
that all its working classes belong to the 
factory population, and that all the miscon- 
duct they witness or hear about among 
females of the lower rank must be ascribed 
to the factory system. The testimony from 
a return from the penitentiary of Manches- 
ter "proves how far the ranks of prosti- 
tution are recruited from factory girls in 
proportion to other classes." This report 
stated that only eight out of fifty proceeded 
from factories, while twenty-nine out of fifty 
were from domestic service.* I could quote 
many statistics upon kindred points. It is 
sufficient to know that the attempts made to 
support charges of the abundance of crime 

* Taylor, p. 45. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 125 

and prostitution in operative towns in Eng- 
land by statistical tables have all been based 
on the supposition that the great town 
nuisances are identical or connected with the 
factory system. My own inquiries and ex- 
amination of criminal records disprove the 
common assumption. 

I have no doubt that immorality exists 
among factory operatives the same as it 
exists on Fifth Avenue and everywhere else 
on earth where men and women are found, 
but I do not beheve that it exists in any 
greater proportion in the factory than in 
any other walk of life. On the other hand, 
I believe that immoral lives are less frequent 
among the factory population than among 
any other class in the conmiunity ; and in- 
vestigations, and extensive ones at that, in 
this country and abroad teach the truth of 
this assertion. 

Some years ago it was my good fortune 
to look over some of the great thread works 
m Paisley, Scotland ; and this very question 
of immorahty was discussed with the fore- 
man of one of the works. One gentleman, 



126 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

who had been connected with the Coates 
factories for forty years, informed me that 
during that period he had known but one 
girl who had departed from a strictly honest 
life ; and she, as soon as her habits were 
known, was ostracised by the coldness of her 
associates. This I found to be true in almost 
every factory I have ever visited. As soon 
as a girl loses her character, her mates frown 
upon her, and she is fairly driven from the 
field. Women in cotton-mills and in all 
other factories are as carefid of their charac- 
ters as is any other class. The charge that 
the factory breeds immorality among women 
is not true, and cannot be sustained by any 
facts that have ever been collected. This 
one condition constitutes the factory an im- 
portant element in social life ; for the women 
who are there, and are working for low 
wages, — lower than any of us would like to 
have paid, but which are governed according 
to economic conditions and law, — are work- 
ing honestly and faithfully, and living honest 
and virtuous lives. It must be so. Women 
cannot work eight or ten or twelve or more 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 127 

hours in a cotton-factory, and live a dissolute 
life the rest of the day. 

What has been said is equally true of 
France. In one locality, out of a criminal 
hst of 4,992, but 216 were workers in the 
textile factories.* 

It is a fact that the factories in France 
are increasing in number, and consequently 
operatives are drawn into them. Now in this 
process of change from the old to the new 
industrial system, which has been watched 
by careful investigators, the direct results 
are easily seen. If the factories have a bad 
influence on morals, crime should remain in 
proportion as the number of factory workers 
increased. The contrary, however, is the 
case; for in the locality already alluded to 
the criminal list in 1855 was 2,214, while in 
1859 it had, by steady reduction, fallen to 
1,654, and in a constantly increasing factory 
population. 

These facts are representative, not isolated, 
in their nature ; and they prove conclusively 
the falsity of prevailing impressions. They 

* Reybaud, Cotton, p. 108. 



128 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

are witnesses that the newer system, by secur- 
ing more competency, fights bad instincts 
with the very best of weapons, — the interest 
of those it employs. 

In great towns the factories have had to 
contend with all the nuisances which a rapid 
increase of population beyond the due limits 
of accommodation must necessarily produce. 
The only places where the factory system 
can be fairly tested on its own merits are the 
small towns in which the factory makes the 
place. Oldham, England, is the true type, 
not Manchester. 

Mr. N. W. Senior has given abundant 
evidence of the truth of these positions. 

There is another supposition relative to 
the factory to which I wish to call attention, 
and which relates emphatically to the topic 
of this paper. It is that the factory has a 
dwarfing influence upon skill : that skiU is 
degraded to common labor. This supposi- 
tion also arises from a superficial examina- 
tion of modern establishments, wherein a 
cheap and often ignorant body of laborers is 
employed, the appearance being that skilled 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 129 

and inteUigent workmen are replaced by 
unskilled and unintelligent workmen, and 
the conclusion being that the modern system 
forces the skilled and inteUigent workman 
downward in the scale of civilization. This 
is not the true sociological conclusion, which 
is that the modern system of industry gives 
the skilled and inteUigent workman an oppor- 
tunity to rise in the scale of employment, 
in inteUectual development, in educational 
acquirements, in the grade of services ren- 
dered, and hence his social standing in his 
community, while at the same time it enables 
what was an unskiUed and uninteUigent 
body of workers to be employed in such 
ways and under such conditions and sur- 
rounded by such stimulating influences that 
they in turn become inteUigent and skiUed, 
and crowd upward into the positions formerly 
occupied by their predecessors, thus enabHng 
them to secure the social standard which 
they desire. This conclusion, it seems to 
me, is the true one, and makes the discus- 
sion of the question whether the modern 
system of industry, the factory, reaUy has 



130 S03IU ETHICAL PHASES 

a stimulating effect upon the intellectual 
growth of the people not only an inter- 
esting, but a peculiarly appropriate, one 
at all times.* 

What is the truth as to wages ? The vast 
influence of wages upon social life need not 
be considered here, but the question whether 
the factory system has increased them may 
be. I am constantly obliged, in my every- 
day labors, to refute the assertion that wages 
under the factory system are growing lower 
and lower. The reverse is the truth, which 

* " As to the abasement of intelligence which is said to follow 
in proportion as tasks are subdivided, it is a conjecture more 
than a truth shown by experience. This abasement is presumed, 
not proven. It would be necessary to prove, for example, that 
the hand weaver, who throws the shuttle and gives motion to 
the loom, is of a superior class to the machine weaver who 
assists, without co-operating, in this double movement. Those 
who really know the facts would have just the opposite opinion. 
Employing the muscles in several operations instead of one has 
nothing in it to elevate the faculties," and this is all the oppo- 
nents of machinery claim. In their view, the most imperfect 
machines, those which require the most effort, are the ones which 
sharpen the intellectual faculties to the greatest degree. We 
can easily see where this argument would carry us if pushed to 
the end. 

" There is nothing in the working of machinery which, com- 
pared with the old methods, resembles an abasement of labor. 
The easing of the arm does not lead to an enf eeblement of the 
mind." Cf. Reybaud. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 131 

is easily demonstrated. The progress of im- 
provement in machinery may have reduced 
the price paid for a single article, yard, or 
pound of product, or for the services of a 
skilled and intelligent operative ; but the 
same improvement has enabled the workman 
to produce in a greater proportion and 
always with a less expenditure of muscular 
labor and in less time, and it has enabled a 
low grade of labor to increase its earnings. 
At the same time, a greater number have 
been benefited, either in consiunption or pro- 
duction, by the improvement. 

Experience has not only evolved, but 
proven, a law in this respect, which is, the 
more the factory system is perfected, the 
better wtU it reward those engaged in it, if 
not in increased wages to skill, certainly in 
higher wages to less skill.* 

Better morals, better sanitary conditions, 
better health, better wages, — these are the 
practical results of the factory system as 
compared with that which preceded it ; and 
the results of aU these have been a keeiiei 

* Reybaud, Cotton, p. 1!'. 



132 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

intelligence. Under the domestic system 
there existed no conunon centres of thought 
and action. Religious bigotry has fought 
against the new order, because it tends to 
destroy the power of the church. Associa- 
tion kills such power in time. One of the 
chief causes of trouble in Ireland, outside 
land difficulties, is its individual system of 
labor, which predominates. Fill Ireland with 
factories, and her elevation is assured ; in- 
deed, the north of Ireland, with its linen 
factories, is prosperous to-day. 

The factory brings mental friction, con- 
tact, which coidd not exist under the old 
system. Take our own factories in New 
England to-day, fed as they are by foreign 
operatives. When they go back to their own 
land, as many do, they carry with them the 
results, whatever they are, of contact with 
a new system ; and the effects of such con- 
tact will tell upon their children, if not upon 
themselves. The factory brings progress 
and intelligence. It estabhshes at the centres 
the pubUc hall for the lyceum and the con- 
cert, and even literary institutions have 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 133 

been the result of the direct influence of the 
system. 

Such thing's could not, in the nature of 
conditions, find a lodgment under the 
domestic system. It is in evidence that 
" the book-trade of Great Britain flourishes 
and fades with its manufactures in vital 
sympathy, while it is nearly indifferent to 
the good or bad state of its agriculture." 

While the factory system is superior in 
almost every respect to the individual sys- 
tem, the former is not free from positive 
evils, because human nature is not perfect. 
These evils are few compared to the magni- 
tude of the benefits of the system ; but they 
shoiUd be kept constantly in mind, that pub- 
lic sentiment may be strong enough some 
day to remove them, — in fact, it is removing 
them. 

Whatever there was that was good in the 
old household plan of labor, so far as keep- 
ing the family together at all times and 
working under the care of the head are con- 
cerned, was temporarily lost when the fac- 
tory system took its place, in so far as the 



134 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

old workers entered the factories. This 
evil, like most others attendant upon the 
new order, has been greatly exaggerated. 
The workers under the old system strenu- 
ously opposed the establishment of the new ; 
and this led to the employment of great 
numbers of parish children, a feature of 
employment which was eagerly fostered by 
parish officers. Yet, while the working of 
young children in mills is something to be 
condemned in our own time, when it began 
it placed them in a far better condition than 
they had ever been in, or could have ex- 
pected to be in, for it made them self-sup- 
porting. 

The children have been excluded from the 
factories in all countries gradually, till the 
laws of most States, European and Ameri- 
can, prohibit their employment under four- 
teen years of age, except on condition of 
their attendance at school for a prescribed 
length of time. 

A great evil which even now attracts at- 
tention, and in our own country, too, is the 
employment of married women. This occurs 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 135 

more generally with foreign women, and too 
often is the result of the indolence or cupid- 
ity of the father. Employers have done 
much to check this evil, which is not so 
much an evil to the present as to the future 
generations. It is bad enough for the pres- 
ent. It robs the young of the care of their 
natural protectors, it demoralizes the older 
children, it makes home dreary, and robs it 
of its amenities. The factory mother's hours 
of labor in the mills are as long as those of 
others ; and then comes the thousand and 
one duties of the home in which, although 
she may be aided by members of the family, 
there is little rest. No ten-hour law can 
reach the overworked housewife in any walk 
of hf e, — certainly not when she is a factory 
worker. Her employment in the mills is a 
crime to her offspring, and, logically, a crime 
to the State ; and the sooner law and senti- 
ment make it impossible for her to stand at 
the loom, the sooner the character of miQ 
operatives will be elevated. I count their 
employment, with the consequent train of 
evils, the worst, and the very worst, of the 



lo6 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

evils of a system which is the grandeur of 
the age in an industrial point of view. 

It is gratifying to know that in Massachu- 
setts cotton-mills only about 8 23er cent, of 
the females employed are married women. 
This is equally true of English factories, 
and I believe that in both countries the 
number is gradually decreasing. So, too, 
the number of operatives who live in indi- 
vidual homes is increasing. 

The employment of children is an evil 
which has been stimulated as much by the 
actions of parents as by mill owners. 

These evils, however, have been the result 
of development rather than of inauguration, 
and thus will disappear as education, in its 
broad sense, takes the place of ignorance. 

The evil effects of the kind of labor per- 
formed in mills, so far as health is concerned, 
have been considerable, while less than those 
attending the household system. 

All employments have features not con- 
ducive to health. These features or con- 
ditions are incidental, and cannot be sep- 
arated from the employment. In mining 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 137 

coal, for instance, the nature of the occupa- 
tion is bad in nearly all respects ; but coal 
must be had, and there is never any lack of 
miners. What, then, shall be done ? 

Operators are in duty bound, of course, 
to make all evils, whether incidental or arti- 
ficial, as light as possible, and should intro- 
duce every improvement which will lighten 
the burden of any class who, by their mental 
incapacity or other causes, are content to 
seek employment in the lowest grades of 
labor. Machinery is constantly elevating 
the grades of labor, and the laborer. The 
working of mines, even, is to-day an easy 
task compared to what it was a few years 
ago. 

The workers themselves have much re- 
sponsibility on their own shoulders, so far as 
the healthfulness or unhealthfulness of an 
occupation is concerned. 

Let the children of factory workers every- 
where be educated in the rudiments of san- 
itary science, and then let law say that bad 
air shall be prohibited, and I believe the 
vexed temperance question will not trouble 



138 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

US to the extent it has. Drunkenness and 
intemperance are not the necessary accom- 
panying evils of the factory system, and 
never have been ; but, wherever corporations 
furnish unhealthy home surroundings, there 
the evils of intemperance will be more or 
less felt in all the directions in which the 
results of rum find their wonderful ramifi- 
cations. 

The domestic system of labor could not 
deal with machinery : machinery really ini- 
tiated the factory system ; that is, the latter 
is the result of machinery. But machinery 
has done something more, — it has brought 
with it new phases of civilization ; for, while 
it means the factory system in one sense, it 
is the type and representative of the civiliza- 
tion of this period, because it embodies, so 
far as mechanics are concerned, the concen- 
trated, clearly wrought-out thought of the 
age. While books represent thought, ma- 
chinery is the embodiment of thought. 

Industry and poverty are not handmaid- 
ens ; and, as poverty is lessened, good morals 
thrive. If labor, employment of the mind, 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 139 

is an essential to good morals, then the high- 
est kind of employment, that requiring the 
most application and the best intellectual 
ejffort, means the best morals. This condi- 
tion, I take courage to assert, is superin- 
duced eventually by the factory system, for 
by it the operative is usually employed in a 
higher grade of labor than that which occu- 
pied hini in his previous condition. For this 
reason the present system of productive in- 
dustry is constantly narrowing the limits of 
the class that occupies the bottom step of 
the social order. 

One of the inevitable results of the fac- 
tory is to enable men to secure a livelihood 
in fewer hours than of old. This is grand in 
itself ; for, as the time required to earn a liv- 
ing grows shorter, our civilization advances. 
That system which demands of a man all his 
time for the earning of mere subsistence is 
demorahzing in all respects. 

The fact that the lowest grade of opera- 
tives can now be employed in mills does not 
signify more ignorance, but, as I have said, 
a raising of the lowest to higher employ- 



140 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

ments ; and, as the world progresses in its re- 
finement, the lowest, which is high compar- 
atively, seems all the lower. Society will 
bring all up, unless society is compelled to 
take up what is called a simpler system of 
labor. We should not forget that growth in 
civihzation means complication, not simplifi- 
cation, nor that the machine is the servant 
of the workman, and not his competitor. 

It is obvious that the factory system has 
not affected society as badly as has been 
generally believed ; and if it has, in its intro- 
duction, brought evils, it has done much to 
remove others. " The unheard-of power it 
has given labor, the wealth that has sprung 
from it, are not the sole property of any 
class or body of men. They constitute a 
kind of common fund, which, though irreg- 
ularly divided," as are all the gifts of nature 
to finite understandings, " ought at least to 
satisfy the material and many of the moral 
wants of society." * 

The softening of the misery caused by the 
change in systems has occurred, but in sub- 

* Reybaud, Cotton, p. 22, 



OF THE LAB OB QUESTION 141 

tie ways. Transition stages are always harsh 
upon the generation that experiences them. 
The great point is that they should be pro- 
ductive of good results in the end. 

The mind recoils at the contemplation of 
the conditions which the vast increase of 
population would have imposed without the 
factory system. 

" It is a sad law, perhaps, but it is an in- 
variable law, that industry, in its march, 
takes no account of the positions that it 
overturns nor of the destinies that it modi- 
fies. We must keep step with its progress, 
or be left upon the road. It always accom- 
pHshes its work, which is to make better 
goods at a lower price, to supply more wants, 
and also those of a better order, not with 
regard for any class, but having in view the 
whole human race. Industry is this, or it is 
not industry. True to its instincts, it has no 
sentiment in it, unless it is for its own in- 
terest; and yet such is the harmony of 
things, when they are abandoned to their 
natural course, notwithstanding the selfish- 
ness of industry, directed to its own good, 



142 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

it turns finally to secure the good of all ; and, 
while requiring service for itself, it serves at 
the same time by virtue of its resources and 
its power."* 

Recent writers, notwithstanding all the 
facts of history, find a solution for whatever 
difficulties result from the production of 
goods under the factory system in the dis- 
persion of congregated labor, and a return 
to simple methods when they would have 
the machines owned and manipulated as in- 
dividual property, under individual enter- 
prise ; but it is safe to assert that " a people 
who have once adopted the large system of 
production are not likely to recede from 
it." Labor is more productive on the system 
of large industrial enterprises : the produce 
is greater in proportion to the labor em- 
ployed ; the same number of persons can be 
supported equally well with less toil and 
greater leisure ; and, in the moral aspect of 
the question, something better is aimed at as 
the good of industrial uuprovement than to 
disperse the workers of society over the 

* Reybaud, Cotton, p. 13. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 143 

earth to be employed in pent-up houses and 
the sin-breeding small shops of another age, 
where there would be scarcely any commu- 
nity of interest or necessary mental com- 
munion with other human beings. " If 
public spirit, generous sentiments, or true 
justice and equahty are desired, association, 
not isolation of interests, is the school in 
which these excellences are nurtured." * 

It is from such influences we discern the 
elevation of an increased proportion of 
working people from the position of un- 
skilled to that of skilled laborers, and the 
opening of an adequate field of remunerative 
employment to women, — two of the most 
important improvements which could be de- 
sired in the condition of the working classes. 
Since, therefore, the extension of the factory 
system tends strongly toward both these 
results, it may be considered as one of the 
features of the present age which is the 
most favorable to their more permanent 
advancement.! 

* Mill's Political Economy, vol. ii., pp. .351, 352, fifth London 
edition. 

t Cf. Morrison, Labor and Capital, p. 195. 



144 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

It is also true that the factory system has 
stamped itself most emphatically upon the 
written law of all countries where it has 
taken root, as well as upon the social and 
moral laws which lie at the bottom of the 
forces which make written law what it is. 

With the exception of laws relating to the 
purely commercial features of the factory 
system, the legislation which that system 
has produced has been stimulated by the 
evils which have grown with it. 

It is the worst phases of society which 
gauge the legislation requisite for its pro- 
tection. Laws other than those for the 
regulation of trade, and the protection of 
rights as to property, by definition of rights, 
are made for the restraint of the evil-dis- 
posed, and do not disturb those whose mo- 
tives and actions are right ; so, if it were not 
for the evils which creep into existence with 
every advance society makes, laws would 
remain unwritten, because not needed. We 
have a way of judging by the worst ex- 
amples. 

The social battles which men have fought 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 145 

have been among the severest for human 
rights ; and they mark eras in social condi- 
tions as clearly as do field contests, in which 
more human lives have been lost, perhaps, 
but in which no greater human interests 
have been involved. 

At the time of the institution of the fac- 
tory system, there was upon the statute 
books of England but few laws relating to 
master and man. Those which did exist 
were largely of criminal bearing, establish- 
ing punishment for various shortcomings of 
the men ; but, with the coming of the new 
system, the evils of poor-law abuses came 
into full view, and, while pauper children 
were vastly better off in the factories than 
in the parish poorhouses, they attracted at- 
tention, and became the subjects of parlia- 
mentary protection. For the first time there 
appeared some of the consequences of con- 
gregated labor, or, rather, the effects of the 
congregation of one class of labor appeared. 
A whole generation of operatives was grow- 
ing up under conditions of comparative 
physical degeneracy, of mental ignorance, 



146 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

and moral corruption, all of which existed 
before, but which the factory system brought 
into strong light. 

And now the great question began to be 
asked, " Has the nation any right to in- 
terfere? Shall society suffer, that individ- 
uals may profit ? " Shall the next and suc- 
ceeding generations be weakened morally 
and intellectually, that estates may be en- 
larged ? 

These questions forced themselves upon 
the public mind, and the fact that pauper 
apprentices might be better off under such 
apprenticeship than in the workhouse could 
have no weight under the influence of the 
great religious and moral waves which swept 
over England in the last quarter of the 
eighteenth century. 

The result was the factory act of Sir Rob- 
ert Peel, 1802. While this act was of no 
great value to the operatives, it was of the 
greatest value to the world ; for it made the 
assertion, which has never been retracted, 
that the nation did have the right to check 
not only open evils, but those which grow 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 147 

individually through the nature of employ- 
ment. 

As legislation progressed in England, the 
education of factory children was provided 
for ; so through the factory came pubHc ed- 
ucation in England. 

The greatest poverty and ignorance pre- 
vailed in the agricultural and mining dis- 
tricts of England ; and, after the reports of 
the Poor Laws Commissioners had exposed 
the demoralizing results of the want of edu- 
cation in the agricultural hamlets, it was 
really a piece of singular effrontery on the 
part of the legislators to accuse the manu- 
facturers of bemg the main authors of the 
miserable state of affairs found among the 
tillers of the soil, and to require the em- 
ployers of factory labor, under heavy pen- 
alties, to be responsible for the education of 
all juvenile operatives whom they employed. 
Until a recent date, law has insisted upon 
the education of factory children only, so 
far as England is concerned ; and, whether 
from good or bad motives in the framers of 
such laws, the factory system has been made 



148 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

the central point upon which popular educa- 
tion in England has turned. And this ac- 
counts in a large degree for the superior in- 
telhgence of the factory population of that 
country when compared with those engaged 
in agriculture. In this very direction the 
influences of the new order of industry upon 
legislation is clearly marked. 

After 1847 the provisions of factory acts 
were extended first to one industry and then 
another, until now they comprehend very 
many of the leading Imes of production. 

It should be remembered that the abuses 
which crept into the system in England 
never existed in this country in any such 
degree as we know they did in the old coun- 
try. Yet there are few States in America 
where manufactures predominate, or hold an 
important position, that law has not stepped 
ui, and restricted either the hours of labor or 
the conditions of labor or insisted upon the 
education of factory children, although the 
laws are usually silent as to children of agri- 
cultural laborers. 

Factory legislation in England, as else- 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 149 

where, has had for its chief object the regu- 
lation of the labor of children and women ; 
but its scope has constantly increased, by 
successive and progressive amendments, until 
it has attempted to secure the physical and 
moral well-being of the workman in all 
trades, and to give him every condition of 
salubrity and of personal safety in the work- 
shops. 

The excellent effect of factory legislation 
has been made manifest throughout the 
whole of Great Britain. "Physically, the 
factory child can bear fair comparison with 
the child brought up in the fields," and in- 
tellectually progress is far greater with the 
former than with the latter. Public opinion, 
struck by these results, has demanded the 
extension of protective measures for chil- 
dren to every kind of industrial labor, until 
Parhament has brought under the influences 
of factory laws the most powerful industries. 

The conditions belonging to the factory 
system are constantly forcing themselves 
into view as the levers which overturn old 
notions and establish precedents at variance 



150 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

with the opinion of judges, as is seen in the 
British legislation as to the liabihty of em- 
ployers for damages resulting from acci- 
dents. 

There is a class of writers who are very 
fond of drawing comparisons between con- 
ditions under the factory system and those 
which existed prior to its establishment. 
They refer to the halcyon days of England, 
and call attention to the Enghsh operative 
working under hand methods as a happy, 
contented, well-fed, moral person. History 
teaches just the reverse ; for it shows, as has 
been pointed out, that prior to the establish- 
ment of the factory the working classes of 
England lived in hovels and mud huts that 
would not be tolerated even in the worst coal- 
mining districts in this country or in Eng- 
land to-day. The factory graduated all these 
people from the mud hut. But what was 
that old system ? Degrading, crime-breed- 
ing, and productive of intemperance in the 
worst form as compared with the factory of 
to-day. 

So the whole matter of the consideration 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 151 

of the workingman to-day becomes intel- 
lectual. He is carried onward and upward 
by the power of mental activity, and can- 
not be treated separately as one of a class, 
as he could in the olden time, because m the 
olden time he was neither a social nor a po- 
htical factor. Changed conditions in all di- 
rections have brought mankind to a new 
epoch, the distinguishing feature of which is 
the factory itself, or machinery, which makes 
it. This, we see, is true when we comprehend 
that machinery is constantly Hfting men out 
of low into high grades of employment, con- 
stantly surrounding them with an intellectual 
atmosphere, rather than keeping them de- 
graded in the sweat-shop atmosphere of the 
olden time. 

The weal or woe of the operative popida- 
tion depends largely upon the temper in 
which the employers carry the responsibility 
intrusted to them. I know of no trust 
more sacred than that given into the hands 
of the captains of industry, for they deal 
with human beings in close relations, — not 
through the media of speech or exhortation, 



152 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

but of positive association ; and by this they 
can make or mar. Granted that the mar 
terial is often poor, the intellects often dull : 
then all the more sacred the trust and all the 
greater the responsibility. The rich and 
powerful manufacturer, with the adjuncts 
of education and good business training, 
holds in his hand something more than the 
means of subsistence for those he employs. 
He holds their moral well-being in his keep- 
ing, in so far as it is in his power to mould 
their morals. He is something more than 
a producer : he is an instrument of God for 
the upbuilding of the race. 

Of course, we all know that the condition 
of the worker is not the ideal one. We all 
know that every employer who has the wel- 
fare of his race at heart, and who is guided 
by ethical as well as economic motives, would 
be glad to see his work-people receiving 
higher pay and Uving in better houses, — hv- 
ing in an environment which should increase 
rather than diminish their social force. At 
the same time, we all recognize that the 
sanitary and hygienic condition of the fac- 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 153 

tory is vastly superior to the sanitary and 
hygienic condition o£ the homes of the 
operatives in many cases. When the factory 
operative in his home reaches the same high 
grade that has been reached in the factory 
itself, his social force and life will be in- 
creased and his standard raised to a much 
higher plane. All these things are matters 
of development ; but, when we understand 
that manufacturers in this country are 
obliged constantly to deal with a heterogen- 
eous mass, so far as nationality is concerned, 
while those in other countries deal with a 
homogeneous mass of operatives, the wonder 
is that here we have kept the standard so 
high as it has been. In considering aU these 
aspects as briefly as they have been touched 
upon, we cannot but feel, as I have indi- 
cated, that the factory reaches down and 
lifts up ; that it does not reach up and draw 
down those who have been raised to a 
higher standard. This is the real ethical 
mission of the factory everywhere. 

Gentlemen in charge of factories are the 
managers of great missionary establishments. 



154 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

In their conduct of them as industrial insti- 
tutions they must recognize economic laws 
and conditions. It would be suicidal to take 
the purely ethical view at the expense of 
the economic ; but, while recognizing the 
economic conditions which compel certain 
actions, I believe there is no great difficulty 
in recognizing also the ethical relations 
which ought to exist between employer and 
employe. These ethical relations are be- 
coming more and more a force in the con- 
duct of industry. Whether the new develop- 
ments of concentrated industrial interests 
will lead to a still higher recognition of the 
ethical forces at work is a question which 
cannot at present be answered. My own 
behef is that the future developments of in- 
dustry will be on this line, and that the 
relation of the employer and his employes 
will rest upon a sounder basis than here- 
tofore. 

The social condition of the workingman 
and his education, which we have insisted 
upon, have led him into the strike method 
as a means of asserting what he calls his 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 155 

rights. He has in this adopted the worst 
examples set him by his employers in the 
past. Greater intelhgence, a broader recog- 
nition of the necessity of higher social 
standards, will lead to a recognition of other 
principles that will enable him to avoid in- 
dustrial war, and his employer to recognize 
the intelligence which is willing to avoid it. 

This may sound like sentiment. I am 
willing to call it sentiment ; but I know it 
means the best material prosperity, and that 
every employer who has been guided by such 
sentiments has been rewarded twofold, — 
first, in witnessing the wonderful improve- 
ment of his people, and, second, in seeing 
his dividends increase and the wages of the 
operatives m crease with his dividends. 

The factory system of the future will be 
run on this basis. The instances of such 
are multiplymg rapidly now ; and, whenever 
it occurs, the system outstrips the pulpit in 
the actual work of the gospel, — that is, in 
the work of humanity. It needs no gift of 
prophecy to foretell the future of a system 
which has in it more possibiUties for good 



156 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

for the masses who must work for day wages 
than any scheme which has yet been devised 
by philanthropy alone. 

To make the system what it will be, the 
factory itself must be rebuilt, and so ordered 
in all its appointments that the great ques- 
tion for the labor reformer shall be how to 
get people out of their homes and into the 
factory. The agitation of such a novel 
proposition will bring all the responsibility 
for bad conditions directly home to the in- 
dividual, and then the law can handle the 
difficulty. 

With true men at the head of industrial 
enterprises, with a political economy which 
shall recognize the power of moral forces in 
the accumulation and distribution of wealth, 
modern productive industry will be not only 
the most powerful element in civiUzation, 
but, as Dr. W. T. Harris has said, " a step in 
the problem of life." We recognize the 
truth which underlies this statement, as well 
as another of his, that " the central fact in 
civil society is the division of labor." I 
have considered the factory system, by the 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 157 

historic and comparative methods, as the 
supreme material result of the division of 
labor. The profound philosophy of the 
results of the division of labor, which in- 
volves, of course, the machinery question 
and the factory system, can receive but pass- 
ing hints in a limited chapter. The subject 
is too rich, too vast, too important, for more 
than suggestive treatment at the present 
time. 



IV 

THE ETHICS OF PRISON LABOR. 



IV 

THE ETHICS OF PRISON LABOR. 

Notwithstanding all the facts, the ex- 
perience, and the observation which go to 
prove that civilization has made wonderful 
advances in almost every direction during 
the last hundred years or more, the assertion 
is constantly made that it is an appearance 
of progress, and not real progress, that at- 
tracts pubhc attention ; and, however much 
popular education may be stimulated and 
supported by pubHc funds, and material 
prosperity may attend our affairs, and music 
and art be nearer the common people than 
ever, nevertheless the pessimist insists that 
real moral conditions have not changed for 
the better, that crime increases, that mar- 
riages decrease relatively, that vice in great 
cities is more strongly intrenched than ever. 
These assertions can be answered in nearly 
every particular, and in various and con- 

161 



162 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

vincing ways to any one who is able to see 
beyond present existing evils. 

One of the purposes of this chapter is to 
answer the charge that progress is apparent, 
and not real, by citing one phase only of 
social science, — the condition of prison labor 
as an index of real moral progress. A Httle 
more than a hundred years ago prisoners 
were either kept in idleness, to the destruc- 
tion of their moral and physical being, or 
else were employed in what is known as 
penal labor. Penal labor had no purpose 
except as it resulted in a supposed disciphne 
of the prisoner. He was kept at work turn- 
ing a crank, or in a treadmill, or throwing 
shot-bags, or doing something else that had 
no utihty whatever as an incentive. It was 
not productive labor in any sense. It was 
grinding, demorahzing. It may have had 
some advantages over idleness in the way of 
physical exercise ; but the mental and moral 
consequences were such as to quite overcome 
the physical benefits. Philanthropists, phi- 
losophers, penologists, began to see that mere 
penal labor was not much better than idle- 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 163 

ness ; and some of these men long ago de- 
scribed prison policies that are carried out 
to-day. 

MabOlon, a famous Benedictine monk, 
Abbe of St. Germain in Paris, and one of 
the most learned men of the day of Louis 
XIV., was one of the earliest of those who 
foreshadowed many of the features of mod- 
ern prison discipline and of prison labor. 
In his dissertations he discussed the matter 
of reformation in prison disciphne. He was 
born in 1632, and died in 1707. It was 
diu-ing- the last half of the seventeenth cen- 
tury that he made known his ideas and plans. 
It was his opinion that penitents might be 
secluded in cells, like those of the Carthusian 
monks, and there employed in various sorts 
of labor. To each cell might be joined a 
little garden, where at appointed hours the 
penitents might take an airing and cultivate 
the ground. 

At a time later than that of Mabillon, 
Clement XI. built a juvenile prison at St. 
Michael, Rome, over the entrance to which 
there was placed this inscription : " Clement 



164 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

XI., Supreme Pontiff, reared this prison for 
the reformation and education of criminal 
youths, to the end that those who, when 
idle, had been injurious to the state, might, 
when better instructed and trained, become 
useful to it." This prison was erected in 
1704. 

Later still. Viscount Vilain XIV., Burgo- 
master of Ghent, built the celebrated prison 
of that town, the construction of which has 
had its influence upon prison building in our 
time ; but the architectural merits of the 
prison built under his plan are the least to 
commend it. Dr. F. H. Wines, in his valu- 
able work. Punishment and Reformation, 
gives Vilain the credit of being the father 
of modern penitentiary science. He made 
rules for the government of the prison and 
the organization of labor in it, and reaUzed 
that in the use of prisoners in productive 
labor was to be found the primary agency 
for reformation of criminals. He appre- 
ciated the importance, Dr. Wines goes on to 
say, of the selection of prison industries, 
choosing, so far as practicable, such as would 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 165 

come least into competition with free labor 
on the outside. There was a great diversity 
of vocations followed in his prison, among 
which were carding, spinning, weaving, shoe- 
making, tailoring, carpentry, and the manu- 
facture of wool and cotton cards. He had 
some purely penal pursuits for disciplinary 
purposes, and he paid great attention to the 
classification of prisoners. The prison was 
opened in the year 1775. 

Howard and Beccaria, the first an Eng- 
lishman and the latter an Italian, hving and 
working in the latter part of the eighteenth 
century, showed the utility and necessity for 
labor and the education of convicts. 

Thus during the last two centuries the 
elements underlying what may be called the 
philosophy or the ethics of prison labor 
were laid. Penologists, philanthropists, and 
politicians, not only m the old country, 
but in this, long ago saw that purely penal 
labor had no reformatory elements in it, and 
that convicts must be put upon some prac- 
tical, productive work, in order best to 
secure their reformation. At the same time 



166 S02IE ETHICAL PHASES 

the State, through its representatives every- 
where, felt obHged to so conduct its prison 
industries as to secure the best returns to 
the treasury ; and until about a quarter o£ a 
century ago there was no serious discussion 
of the systems of labor other than on a treas- 
ury basis, — the profits which could be se- 
cured to the State by the economic utiliza- 
tion of prison labor. 

The great changes which have come in 
methods during that period, — the last 
twenty-five years, — by which more sane 
considerations have been followed, and by 
which and under which many of the evils in 
prison discipline have been brought to hght, 
are due primarily to the agitation of the labor 
reformers ; but, Hke all reforms, the real ele- 
ments of the question involved soon passed 
out of the hands of the initiators through 
the recognition by the public of the crucial 
principles involved. The labor reformers 
made their attack along certain restricted 
lines. They alleged that the employment 
of convicts in productive industry interfered 
largely with the rates of wages and with 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 167 

prices, and lience prison industries were a 
menace to their welfare. They were never 
able to make out a very strong case on these 
lines ; but great credit is due them for per- 
sisting in their agitation, and thus aiding 
penologists and philanthropists in calling at- 
tention to the greater question of how re- 
formatory measui'es could be introduced in 
the conduct of prisons. Thus the prison- 
labor question became something more than 
a mere economic one. Here and there prison 
labor did affect wages and prices, but in all 
the investigations which I have made on this 
subject during the last twenty years I have 
never found much influence in either direc- 
tion growing out of the employment of pris- 
oners. The question was there, neverthe- 
less, and demanded attention ; and it has 
received it. 

Political platforms on this subject were as 
inconsistent, and even as amusing, as in 
other directions. Parties would insist in 
their platforms that the administration 
should keep the prisoners at work, but in 
such ways as to relieve outside labor of com- 



168 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

petition. Such a platform is in line with 
another, which we have often seen, demand- 
ing of administration a reduction in taxation 
and a hberal expenditure for public uses. 

In the first attacks the labor reformers in 
many places demanded that prisoners should 
not be employed at all. They soon saw that 
this would not do, — that taxation for the sup- 
port of prisons would cost them more than 
the slight losses they might meet through 
competition. They further saw that any 
work done anywhere by any man, whether 
in or out of prison, was in competition with 
the work of some other man who wished to 
perform the same service. They never quar- 
relled when a large factory of a thousand 
hands, for instance, was erected in a com- 
munity ; but, when a thousand convicts were 
set at work, they felt that their employment 
was a menace to them. The reports that 
have been pubhshed from time to time, both 
by State governments and by the federal 
government, have convinced the public that 
the volume of labor performed in all the 
prisons of the country was not and could 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 169 

not be a menace to general industry. Nev- 
ertheless, there was enough in it, as I have 
said, to demand attention ; and it has re- 
ceived the most thoughtful consideration of 
those men who are anxious not only to pre- 
serve and strengthen economic conditions, 
but to adopt those reformatory measiu^es 
which shall in the end prove of the greatest 
advantage to society at large. 

It was natural that the employment of 
prisoners should assume various forms, and 
hence we have half a dozen systems of prison 
labor. These have been known generally 
as the Contract System, the Piece Price Sys- 
tem, the Lease System, and the Pubhc Ac- 
count System. Mr. Victor H. Olmsted, one 
of the statistical experts of the United States 
Department of Labor, in making up a digest 
of convict labor laws in force in the United 
States at the present time for the use of the 
Lidustrial Commission, has very properly 
classified the various systems authorized by 
statutes for the emplojrment of convicts into 
two groups, as follows : — 

First, systems under which the product 



170 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

or profits of the convicts' labor is shared bj 
the State with private individuals, firms, or 
corporations. Under this group three dis- 
tinct systems are authorized, known respec- 
tively as the Contract System, the Piece 
Price System, and the Lease System. 

Second, systems under which convicts 
are worked whoUy for the benefit of the 
State or its political subdivisions or public 
institutions. Under this group he classes 
three systems, also authorized by statutes, 
known as the Public Account System, the 
State Use System, and the Public Ways and 
Works System. 

All these systems or methods of employ- 
ing convicts have been discussed over and 
over again, their advantages and disadvan- 
tages considered, and their effect upon the 
treasury, upon the convict, and upon what is 
known as free labor. In fact, all the ele- 
ments concerning the employment of con- 
victs have received very great attention, 
not only from members of prison associa- 
tions, but from legislators, economists, and 
sociologists everywhere. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 171 

Lookino- back to the sentiments announced 
by the men cited at the beginning of this 
chapter, who may be denominated the pio- 
neers in advanced thought relative to dis- 
cipline in prisons and the employment of 
inmates, it is found that at the present day 
there have been modifications which lead to 
conclusions entirely different from those 
which formed the basis of statutory pro- 
visions a quarter of a century ago. These 
modifications have come through experience 
and enlightenment. We have all changed 
our views more or less. Personally, I am 
very glad to say that, while studying this 
question of prison labor officially for more 
than a score of years, I have seen the 
changes which have caused me to enlarge 
my ideas in some respects, to modify them 
in others. Contact with a system, practical 
observation of it or any phase of it, are in- 
structive and broadening. We all remember 
how every one — especially in the north — at 
all interested in penology and the effects of 
prison labor would condemn in most unmiti- 
gated terms the Lease System of the South. 



172 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

At the same time, they praised the Contract 
System, which prevailed generally in northern 
prisons. Afterwards we all began to con- 
demn the Contract System ; while the labor 
and prison reformers in the South, in begin- 
ning to condemn their own system, demanded 
the application of the Contract System of the 
North. The enlightening influence of knowl- 
edge in this respect was well illustrated 
during the session of the National Prison 
Association at Atlanta in 1886. During 
that session the prison authorities of Georgia 
invited the members of the association to 
inspect a convict camp. It was my pleasure 
to be one of the party. Going out on the 
train, one could hear only general condem- 
nation of the Southern system. Coming 
back to the city, the remark was frequently 
made, and by some of the most distinguished 
penologists of the country, that they had 
seen a great light ; that the emplojrment of 
the class of prisoners which prevailed most 
generally in the South must, for a time, be 
under the odious Lease System, for it fur- 
nished them with outdoor work, and at the 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 173 

same time helped the treasury. It would 
have been insane on the part of the Southern 
authorities to have placed the negro convicts, 
especially, in such prison constructions as we 
have in the North. It was made plain to 
the Northern visitors that any such course 
would have resulted in an enormous death- 
rate, without any substantial economic re- 
sults. They found that the Southern au- 
thorities regretted the necessity of the Lease 
System ; that, after the war, when the South- 
ern States were obHged to take care of a 
large class of criminals that had been dealt 
with in different ways prior thereto, they 
were compelled to resort to the most primi- 
tive methode of employing them. So the 
Lease System was really a valuable sug- 
gestion at the time. It is outgrowing its 
usefulness. The evils of it have proved 
greater than its advantages, and the South- 
ern authorities are considering this ques- 
tion of prison labor along broader and 
more enlightened lines. I refer to this 
simply to show how any great question 
changes with the conditions accompanying 



174 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

it, and with the thought and study of its 
students. 

The Contract System was and is probably 
the best for the treasury, but for reformatory 
purposes it lacks the elements of control. 
The facts shown by investigation prove that, 
on the whole, and without regard to systems, 
all prisons are rmi at a loss to the State ; 
and the conclusion has been forced upon the 
public mind that, if thousands of dollars 
have to be paid for the support of prisons, 
and the return for labor is not more than 
from 50 to 75 per cent, of the cost, prison 
labor might as well be turned into reforma- 
tory measures as to be used simply for any 
profit it brmgs to the treasury. This is the 
greatest advance in the prison-labor question, 
— the ignoring of the treasury, except in- 
cidentally, and the adaptation of the work 
and the education of convicts to the very 
best results to the individual inmate. Hence 
the Contract System had to go, and with it 
the Piece Price System, which was only a 
modification of it. I need not dwell upon 
the evils of the Contract System, — which 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 175 

was once thought, on the whole, the very 
best that could be adopted, — for we all 
know them. 

The crude State Account System, under 
which goods were made m the prisons, under 
the control of the prison authorities, instead 
of under outside contractors and the super- 
intendence of outside instructors, and sold 
for the benefit of the treasury, seemed at one 
time to offer a fair solution of the diffi- 
culties ; but this system proved insufficient, 
for it was soon found that goods made by 
convicts, and at the cost of the State as a 
manufacturer, were sold on the market with- 
out any very great regard to market prices. 
And thus this system left a greater impres- 
sion upon outside industry than the Contract 
System itself ; at least, this was so in theory, 
and it proved so in practice in many in- 
stances. Yet the Public Account System 
had in it reformatory elements which were 
not found in either the Lease or the Contract 
System. 

The next step in the evolution was a 
natural one, and one against which many 



176 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

objections were raised, and in carrying out 
which some serious obstacles seemed to exist. 
This step was the application of what is 
properly called the State Use System, a phase 
of the PubHc Account System of employing 
prisoners. Under this system prisoners 
were to be engaged in the manufacture of 
things to be used by the prison itself, and 
by other State or public institutions. It is 
curious to note how rapidly this idea has 
been adopted by State governments and by 
the United States government. The Eng- 
lish prisons gave the results of some expe- 
rience in utilizing prisoners on public works, 
and this led to the partial adoption of the 
system of employing convicts in the manu- 
facture of things which the State itself could 
use. 

The history of the adoption of the State 
Use System in this country becomes interest- 
ing at this point. Broadly, this system is, 
as already intimated, the PubHc Account 
System in all respects, except that the prod- 
ucts of the convicts' labor manufactured 
from raw materials purchased by the institu- 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 177 

tions, and under the sole direction of prison 
officials, or produced in agricultural or other 
employments, are used in the penal, reform- 
atory, or other pubhc institutions instead of 
being sold to the general public. 

Twenty-eight States of the Union provide 
for the Contract System, six for the Piece 
Price System, twenty-five for the Lease 
System, forty-seven States and Territories, in- 
cluding the District of Columbia, for the 
Pubhc Account System, and twenty-four for 
the State Use features of the Public Account 
System. In some of the States providing 
for the State Use System there is still pro- 
vision for the use of the Contract System, 
and even for other phases of the different 
systems ; but, directing our consideration 
now specifically to the State Use System, it is 
found that the first State in the Union to 
provide for it was Nevada, by an act of the 
legislature approved Feb. 28, 1887. Ne- 
vada did not adopt the broad State Use Sys- 
tem as it is now conducted in some States ; 
but it provided that State prison convicts en- 
gaged in the manufacture of boots and 



178 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

shoes should make all the boots and shoes 
required for the use of the inmates of the 
prison and by wards of the State and other 
institutions, to be paid for by such institu- 
tions. By later acts, the State required the 
employment of its convicts in preparing 
stone and other materials for use m the con- 
struction of public buildings. 

The next State to indulge in any legisla- 
tion upon this new system was Massachu- 
setts, by an act approved June 16, 1887, in 
which act it is provided that, — 

" The general superintendent shall, as far 
as may be, have manufactured in the State 
prison, reformatories, and houses of cor- 
rection such articles as are in common use 
in the several State and county institutions. 
He shall, from time to time, notify the of- 
ficers of such institutions having charge of 
the purchase of supplies of such goods as 
he has remainmg in hand ; and said officers 
shall, as far as may be, purchase of said 
articles as are necessary to the maintenance 
of the institutions which they may represent. 
The articles manufactured in said prison. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 179 

reformatory, or house of correction shall be 
sold at the wholesale market price of goods 
of like kind and grade." 

The legislation of other States providing 
for the application of the State Use System 
was secured at later periods, mostly since 
1890, although some of them passed laws in 
1888 and 1889. The States now providmg 
for the State Use System, or some general 
feature of it, are Arkansas, California, Indi- 
ana, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, 
Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, 
Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New 
York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, 
Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, 
West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The United 
States government, by acts passed in 1894— 
95, provides that convicts in the United 
States penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, 
Kan., shall be employed exclusively in the 
manufacture and production of articles and 
supplies for the penitentiary and for the 
government. 

There are other States which adopt the 
State Use principle in the employment of 



180 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

convicts in quarrying and preparing stone 
for the building of roads and upon public 
works, thus recognizing the principle in- 
volved. These States are Delaware, Georgia, 
Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, New Mex- 
ico, South Dakota, Oregon, and Virginia. 

It is not necessary for the purposes of 
this chapter to discuss the experience of all 
the above-mentioned States that have adopted 
the State Use plan, even if the information 
for such discussion were at hand. The m- 
formation is not at hand, for there has been 
no general investigation covering all the 
States ; but we may learn of the value of this 
system by looking to the experience of 
Massachusetts and New York, two States 
which have felt the effects of the agitation 
of the prison-labor question as much as any 
other State, and more than most of them. 

Under the law of Massachusetts already 
quoted, passed in June, 1887, that State had 
no experience. Her experience has been 
under the act of 1898, providing for the 
employment of prisoners in making goods 
for pubhc institutions. New York's expe- 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 181 

rience has been under the law of 1896, 
which authorizes the employment of con- 
victs in State prisons, penitentiaries, jails, 
and reformatories in the production of com- 
modities for use in any public mstitution in 
the State, such commodities to be paid for 
thereby. In the application of the State 
Use System, therefore, New York has had a 
longer experience than Massachusetts. The 
new constitution of the State of New York, 
which went into effect Jan. 1, 1895, pro- 
vides that, on and after the first day of 
January in the year 1897, no person in any 
prison, penitentiary, jail, or reformatory 
shaU be required or allowed to work, while 
under sentence thereto, at any trade, indus- 
try, or occupation wherein or whereby his 
work, or the product or profit of his work, 
shaU be farmed out, contracted, given, or 
sold to any person, firm, association, or cor- 
poration ; but this section, by specific lan- 
guage in the constitution, is not to be con- 
strued to prevent the legislatui-e from pro- 
viding that convicts may work for, and that 
the products of their labor may be disposed 



182 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

of to, the State or any political division 
thereof, or for or to any public institution 
owned or managed and controlled by the 
State or any political division thereof. 

The State Use System is therefore the 
system of New York, both by constitutional 
and statutory provision. The failure or the 
success of this system in these two States 
(New York and Massachusetts) must be 
taken as indicative of the failure or success 
in the other States that provide for it ; for 
the obstacles and the disadvantages, as well 
as the advantages, of the system are on trial 
there more perfectly, probably, than in any 
other Commonwealth. 

The first obstacle or disadvantage to the 
State Use System which suggested itself to 
the minds not only of those who were thor- 
oughly in favor of it, but of its opponents, 
related to the volume of demand by State 
institutions for prison-made goods. It was 
assumed by many, and with considerable 
reason, that the number of convicts available 
for the production of goods needed by the 
St^te would be vastly in excess of the de- 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 183 

mand therefor. The fallacy in the reason- 
ing of the advocates of the system consisted 
in a lack of real conception of the relation 
of producers to consumers. It was loosely 
argued that the prisoners would consume 
what they made. 

By the census of 1890 there was one 
producer of manufactured goods to 14 of 
the population. This statement involves all 
manufactured products, whether consumed 
in this country or exported. Taking a 
single industry, that of men's clothing, it is 
found that there was one producer to 248 
of the population. Calculations based on 
the actual needs of some States showed that, 
in supplying those needs, only a small pro- 
portion of the prisoners would be required- 
This caused apprehension that many prison- 
ers would have to be kept in idleness. For- 
tunately for the system, this objection, it is 
now thought, can be overcome, and, in fact, 
has been partially overcome in two ways : 
New York has solved the problem, if it can 
be solved so far as this particular objection 
is concerned, first, by providing that the 



184 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

product of prisons may be used in supplying 
all State institutions and those o£ any politi- 
cal division, thus broadening the real market 
for prison-made goods on the basis of the 
State Use plan ; second, by the introduction 
of methods of technical and trade education, 
such methods to be applied whenever and 
wherever there are any idle prisoners com- 
petent to be instructed under the system. 

Massachusetts has sought to solve this 
problem, following the obstacle named, — 
that is, lack of demand, — by providing in 
the preluninary stages of the system that, if 
goods are manufactured beyond the demand, 
they may be sold in the market under cer- 
tain restrictions, and by allowing the Con- 
tract System to prevail for a while. The 
law under which the State Use System is 
apphed in Massachusetts was passed April 
14, 1898 ; and this law declares that it shall 
be the duty of the general superintendent 
of prisons to cause to be produced, so far as 
possible, in the State prison, the reforma- 
tories, the State farm, and the jails and 
houses of correction articles and materials 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 185 

used in the several public institutions of the 
Commonwealth and of the counties thereof. 
It gives the managers of the different insti- 
tutions controlled by the State or the coun- 
ties the right to purchase their suppUes of 
outside producers, provided they cannot be 
supplied by the prisons ; but it introduces a 
very severe check on any pretence that they 
cannot be supplied by the prisons by specify- 
ing that no bills for articles or materials 
named in the list which the general superin- 
tendent is obhged to furnish all institutions 
in the State or comities purchased otherwise 
than from a prison shall be allowed or paid 
unless the bill is accompanied by a certificate 
from the general superintendent that such 
goods could not be supplied upon requisition 
of the prisons. So, if articles or materials 
are not on hand in the prison storehouses, 
and are needed for immediate use, the super- 
intendent shall at once notify the officer 
making requisition that the same cannot be 
filled; and then, and then only, can the 
articles or materials be purchased elsewhere. 
The particular fault of the law is that it does 



186 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

not provide that all institutions in any politi- 
cal division — those less than counties — are 
to be supplied in the way provided for State 
and county institutions. The New York 
law is much better in this respect. 

To learn how far this question of demand 
and supply offers any obstacle to the success 
of the State Use System, we must consult 
the facts alone. Theories and wishes and 
views are of no account. The superintend- 
ent of prisons of New York states that the 
system is working fairly well in this respect. 
During a recent fiscal year there was a de- 
crease in Sing Sing shipments of over 
$113,500 and an increase in the shipments 
from Auburn and CHnton of nearly $36,000, 
or a net decrease for all of nearly $67,000. 
The causes contributing to the decrease at 
Sing Sing are to be found in the fact that 
in 1897 and 1898 large quantities of suppKes 
were made there for the national guard. 
The attorney-general held that the guard is, 
under the special law governing it, exempt 
from the provisions of the law requiring 
purchases to be made of the prison ; so Sing 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 187 

Sing is doing no work for the national 
guard, that not being considered a State in- 
stitution in the interpretation the attorney- 
general puts upon the present law. 

During the same year, 1897-98, $50,000 
worth of street-brooms were shipped to the 
city of New York ; but at present none are 
being shipped to the city, as the State com- 
missioner of prisons assigned the street-broom 
industry to the Kings County Penitentiary, 
and the brooms for New York City are now 
made at that institution. The result of this 
was that a thoroughly organized, instructive, 
and prosperous industry, which during the 
previous year was worked to its full capacity, 
later on practically did nothing. Another 
reason for the decrease in demands upon the 
Sing Sing mdustries was the establishment 
in several State hospitals and other chari- 
table institutions of plants for the manu- 
facture of their own supplies in the way of 
boots, shoes, clothing, etc. The industries 
at Auburn and Clinton prisons are such that 
they have not been so seriously affected by 
the causes just enumerated, and thus each 



188 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

of these prisons shows a slight increase in 
shipments. 

Varying demand for supplies and diffi- 
culties in selecting industries belong to this 
feature of the system ; but, with the ex- 
tension of the supplies under the New York 
law to municipal as well as to State and 
coimty institutions, these difficulties are 
likely to disappear. Already the demand 
for school furniture from Auburn has been 
nearly doubled, while from another institu- 
tion it has increased nearly 50 per cent. 
The superintendent for New York reports 
that in some kinds of supplies the requisi- 
tions have much exceeded the capacity of 
such industries for production, this being 
true in respect to underwear, hosiery, 
blankets, and school and office furniture. 
Some other kinds of manufactures have been 
for a season very active in meeting the actual 
demands, but the requisitions diminish in 
some degree and at times. 

Of course, there is great difficulty in se- 
lecting the right kind of industries. The 
short experience of two years in New York, 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 189 

however, has demonstrated that bottom facts 
need to be studied and thoroughly digested 
in selecting and organizing an industry for 
permanent use in the prisons. These facts 
indicate that the quahty and quantity of the 
supplies required shall be satisfactory ; that 
the prisons shall manufacture the supphes 
successfully at market prices; that the de- 
mand for the goods shall be permanent ; that 
the amount of such suppUes consumed shall 
maintain such demand for them that their 
production will furnish employment for a 
sufficient number of prisoners to insure earn- 
ings to meet the fixed charges of the indus- 
try, — the compensation of instructors, fore- 
men, officers, and the incidental expenses, — 
and also afford a reasonable return to the 
State for the labor of the convicts ; that such 
production, furthermore, shall not exces- 
sively compete with free labor or to its detri- 
ment. These complex demands, which nec- 
essarily enter into the choice of an industry, 
make the exercise of the most careful and 
discreet judgment of prison authorities vital 
in organizing, adjusting, and operating in- 



190 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

dustries, so that successful production shall 
not outrun the demand for the suppHes. 

Thus it is seen that the prison authorities 
of New York are thoroughly alive to this 
very question, constituting the first obstacle 
that has been met in estabhshing the State 
Use System. AU the obstacles were sug- 
gested many years ago by Sir Edmimd Du- 
Cane, one of the highest authorities in the 
world on prison labor. 

The experience of Massachusetts has been 
practically that of New York, but it is in a 
way fairly to meet the demand. When it 
extends the system, as already intimated, to 
municipalities, as can be done under the 
New York law, it is believed the obstacle 
now being treated will be overcome. 

The second obstacle which has been raised 
to this system relates to the variety of goods 
needed by State institutions, it being feared 
that the labor of the prisons is not of suf- 
ficient skill to produce everything that may 
be needed. This was also one of DuCane's 
chief objections to a system which he thor- 
oughly favored, and there is something in it. 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 191 

Nevertheless, with the attachment to the 
system of methods of technical and trade 
education, there is no reason why nearly all, 
if not all, the supplies required by public in- 
stitutions cannot be produced. 

If at any time the reader should be in Al- 
bany, it is suggested that he go to the Capitol 
and visit the office of the superintendent of 
prisons of the State of New York. There he 
will see a room finished in beautifully carved 
panels of quartered oak. The workmanship 
is fine, the designs beautiful, and the room as 
handsome as any that can be found in a pub- 
he building ; yet the carving was all done by 
the prisoners at Sing Smg, worked out to a 
plan of matching, and the pieces shipped to 
Albany, where they were put in place by 
workmen of that city. It is an illustration 
of the effect of the efforts to educate pris- 
oners in high-grade work. Of course, the 
supermtendent would not have fitted up tliis 
beautiful room had it not been for the fact 
that he wished to illustrate by this object- 
lesson the results of the educational side of 
the system. 



192 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

Dr. Brockway, late of the Elmii-a Reform- 
atory, gives much information relative to 
the results of technical and trade educa- 
tion as carried on in the magnificent institu- 
tion under his charge. The work has been 
carried so far there that that prison has been 
denominated a great technical university. 
In this hes the solution, probably, of the 
question relating to variety of products. 
Time must be given the system to demon- 
strate its fullest utility, but only in the edu- 
cation of convicts can the obstacle relating 
to variety be fully overcome. Without it, 
it can only be partially overcome. 

The third obstacle is one of sentiment, 
purely and simply. Army of&cers in Ger- 
many have objected to their commands 
wearing uniforms made in prisons. Militia 
of&cers in this country have offered the 
same objection, yet they are glad to sleep 
under blankets that are made by the pris- 
oners; and I have been informed that 
samples of uniforms made in prison, even 
for officers' wear, are superior to those 
usually furnished by the State through the 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 193 

ordinary method of contract with outside 
manufacturers. This obstacle will pass away 
in time. It is not one that will effectually 
block the progress of the State Use System. 
It has been effective in some respects, but 
it is believed that the objection is purely 
temporary in its working. 

The above are the main reasons which 
have been offered why the State Use System 
should not be adopted. As already stated, 
at one time they had some weight ; but now, 
in the Hght of practical experience, short as 
it has been, they have no very great weight. 
Certainly, the advantages of the system in 
great measure offset the disadvantages or 
objections. There are no permanent dis- 
advantages to the system. There are only 
temporary obstacles. The advantages are, 
that the system makes the least possible 
impression upon the rates of wages and the 
prices of goods. To be sure, the amount of 
products of the prisons consumed by the 
State or any of its institutions reduces the 
products of outside establishmentspro tanto ; 
but there is no impression upon the vital 



194 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

elements of industry outside, — prices and 
wages, — and it is conceded by all tliat the 
prisoners must be kept employed if any 
reformatory measures are to be adopted. 

The workiugmen, who found much fault 
with the Contract System, are almost uni- 
versally satisfied with the working of the 
modern system, as are also the manufact- 
urers, who do not have to compete with a 
producer not obliged to consider cost in fix- 
ing prices. If this satisfaction becomes gen- 
eral, our legislatures will be relieved of great 
pressure from two avenues of approach. 
The paid lobbyist of the contractor will not 
be found m the lobbies of the legislature, 
nor will the committees of labor unions be 
found antagonizing them. The subject it- 
self will also be eliminated from public dis- 
cussion in large measure. Politics will in- 
terfere now and then ; and in some States 
where the State Use System has been adopted 
it will be abolished, and older methods, or 
something more injurious, be resorted to as a 
makeshift. 

One of the most powerful reasons for the 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 195 

introduction of the State Use System is that 
under it machinery is not employed to any 
great extent. The use of machinery, the 
making of the prison a factory for the rapid 
production of goods, was one of the most 
aggravating sources of annoyance to the 
working-man. The use of hand machines, 
or the production of goods by hand, reduces 
this cause of attack to its minimum. At the 
same time, it enables the prison authorities 
to keep the prisoners themselves almost con- 
stantly occupied in producing the goods 
required of them. It also has an educa- 
tional benefit that must be fully considered 
and appreciated. If technical and trade 
education is to accompany or become a part 
of the State Use System, hand-labor methods 
must be utilized to the fullest extent. Of 
course, in the production of some goods, or 
in the preparation of the raw material for 
some of them, machinery must be used, as, 
for instance, in the carding of wool for hand- 
woven blankets and other goods. The set- 
ting up of much powerful machinery in a 
State prison will be avoided. 



196 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

The remunerative character of the State 
Use System has been well exemplified in the 
experience of both Massachusetts and New 
York ; and, on the whole, the effect upon the 
treasuries of these States has been as satisfac- 
tory as, if not more so than, under the Con- 
tract System. The testimony of Mr. Petti- 
grove, the general superintendent of prisons 
of Massachusetts, is to this effect. With 
the small working capital appropriated by 
the legislature, he has been able to establish 
the industries called for by the law, and to 
conduct them in such a way as to meet some 
of the financial objections to the State Use 
System. 

In addition to the testimony of the 
prison officials, or those immediately con- 
nected with the administration of the law 
relative to the State Use System in New 
York and Massachusetts, we have the tes- 
timony of several legislative committees 
appointed to investigate different prison 
systems, and to make recommendations to 
their respective legislatures. Attention 
will be called to but two of these, and first 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 197 

to that of the Pennsylvania Legislative Com- 
mittee, acting under authority of the law of 
May 21, 1895, and resolutions of July 26, 

1897. This committee, of which Hon. 
Jacob Krouse, of Philadelphia, was chau*- 
man, submitted a report adopted Dec. 20, 

1898. In this report the committee say — 
and the report is understood to be unani- 
mous, and was made after the members had 
famiharized themselves with the systems of 
convict labor prevailing in Pennsylvania and 
other States — that from the infonnation 
obtained there was one gleam of hght, and 
that was exhibited by the State of New 
York. The committee might have added, 
had they made the report a few months 
later, that there was light also from other 
States. They stated that, prior to the pres- 
ent law of New York, that State had been a 
producer, manufacturer, and seller of com- 
modities in the open market, competing with 
other makers of the same products, but that 
by the constitutional provision the State en- 
forced a mandatory clause which would have 
thrown every one of her convicts into a state 



198 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

of idleness except for a suggestion which 
seemed to afford a solution of the difficulty. 
That suggestion, which the committee state 
was exactly in line with one which they had 
made to the legislature of their State in a 
report of 1897, related to the labor of pris- 
oners for the benefit of charitable, benevo- 
lent, and political institutions which the 
State controlled or supported either in 
whole or in part. After examining this sys- 
tem, the committee concluded, after a labor- 
ious investigation from all sides of the pres- 
ent system prevaihng in the State of New 
York, and its applicability to Pennsylvania, 
that there appears to be no objection offered 
to it from any source. The committee had 
before them very many prison officials, and 
gathered a large amount of testimony ; and 
they found that the unanimity with which 
the State institutions of Pennsylvania gave 
their assent to the new plan of operations 
was remarkable. They found that the New 
York prisons were enabled to employ their 
inmates, and to teach new trades to such of 
them as were willing to learn ; that the 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 199 

State-supported institutions get their wants 
supplied with the best quahty of goods, at 
prices satisfactory to them; that whatever 
economies or earnings may result are fully 
realized by the State, and the State alone, 
without any injury to or complaint from the 
representatives of labor outside, and, further, 
with their acquiescence. The committee, 
therefore, reported a bill providing for the 
production in the several prisons of goods 
required by all State-supported institutions. 
This is the testimony of a most industrious 
committee after long and patient investi- 
gation. 

New York has also had its legislative 
committee investigating this subject ; and its 
chairman, Hon. F. R. Peterson, made a 
report on the subject of prison labor. The 
resolution of the assembly appointing this 
committee instructed its members particu- 
larly to inquire into the effect of the present, 
or the State Use System of convict labor 
upon free labor. The general conclusions 
of the committee were as follows : — 

1. That the present system has not yet 



200 S03IE ETHICAL PRASES 

succeeded in furnishing employment for all 
the convicts in State prisons. 

2. That the financial results are as yet 
inadequate and unsatisfactory. 

3. That the labor classes of the State are 
not at the present time suffering from the 
competition of convict labor, as the same is 
carried on in the prisons and penal institu- 
tions of the State. 

4. That the unsatisfactory results up to 
the present time will be, in some degree, 
obviated by greater experience and organiza- 
tion. 

5. That the principle of the greatest 
diversification of industries, coupled with a 
complete supply for the special market for 
any fine of goods manufactured, will best 
preserve the laboring classes from convict 
competition in the future. 

6. That the industries in the peniten- 
tiaries, and marketing of the products, 
should be placed imder the same control 
as industries in the State prisons. 

7. That the cell systems of the three 
State prisons should be rebuilt by convict 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 201 

labor, and also that a new wall should be 
constructed at Sing Sing in the same man- 
ner. 

8. That the policy of prohibiting by 
legislative enactment the employment o£ 
convicts upon certain industries should be 
discountenanced ; and, generally, that if the 
present system be carried out faithfully and 
intelligently, and without interference, it wiU 
demonstrate within a few years the wisdom 
of those who caused its adoption, and will 
prove a better system of convict labor than 
has ever before been employed in this State. 

With the experience which has been out- 
lined, and the testimony of the committees 
referred to, there is, nevertheless, some 
grumbling or condemnation of the system ; 
but this condemnation, it seems to me, results 
from a lack of understanding of the system 
and its workings. There will be deficits 
here and there, a decrease in the demand 
for goods sometimes, and other difficulties 
that will have to be met by legislatures and 
by prison officers. One way of meeting the 
objection relative to the non-employment of 



202 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

a portion of the prisoners relates to the use 
of them in the reclamation of waste lands by 
trenching or reforestization, where such 
things can be carried on ; to the building of 
canals and roads, and other public works ; 
and to the utilization of prisoners in prepar- 
ing material by hand labor for the many 
purposes of the State. These supplementary 
provisions will probably result in overcoming 
aU the obstacles that are now raised against 
the State Use System, the general adoption 
of which is still a matter which experience 
alone can determine. Such experience must 
be secured under varying conditions, and to 
such extent as will demonstrate the prac- 
ticability of the new methods. 

I have purposely avoided discussing at 
length the merits and demerits of other 
systems than the State Use System, and 
have made no attempt whatever at being 
consistent with what I may have stated 
in the past in any place or in any official 
report. Nevertheless, it is gratifying to 
find, on consulting articles and reports 
which I have written, that I am not very 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 203 

inconsistent after all, for in 1879 I recom- 
mended to the Massachusetts legislature 
the enactment of laws looking to the pro- 
duction in the prisons of the State of all 
goods required by them or by any depart- 
ment of the State ; that the greatest diver- 
sity of employment consistent with the 
capacity of the prisoners be insisted upon, 
and that, whenever possible, farms be car- 
ried on by the prison administration for 
the supplying of institutions ; and, again, 
in 1880, that the use of all power ma- 
chinery be prohibited in prison shops, and 
the convicts employed upon hand work, 
as upon hand-made boots and shoes, hand- 
woven goods for prison wear, and other 
State purposes ; and, further, that all 
idea of making prisons self-supporting be 
abandoned, and the convicts be taught 
to turn their hands to any trade requir- 
ing skill and training. Nevertheless, in 
the study of the subject of prison labor 
for more than a score of years, I have, 
with all other students of the same sub- 
ject, been willing to abandon some no- 



204 S03IE ETHICAL PEASES 

tions, to modify some views, and to accept 
the results of practical experience. 

Under the agitation, the idea has grown 
that the convict or the criminal should be 
treated from the physician's point of view, — 
as a man morally sick, restricted in his lib- 
erty for the sake of society, but, while 
being restricted, given the best possible 
opportunity for moral development and 
also for the development of his working 
powers, so that when he is freed he may 
take up self-sustaining work as a good 
citizen of the community. 

This state of affairs shows the remark- 
able changes in prison discipline and the 
development of the prisoner, and is one 
of the strongest answers to the allega- 
tion that progress is apparent and not 
real. Here is a concrete illustration of 
the real moral and economic progress. 
Now, instead of the old degrading condi- 
tions, in all prisons everywhere civilized gov- 
ernments are conducting prison industries 
in such a way as to leave the least im- 
pression on prices and wages. They are 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 205 

recognizing the force of the suggestion 
that it is the interest of labor and capital 
to reduce the number of prisoners as an 
initiative to means of greater reform; that 
they must so deal with criminals as to ef- 
fect a cure of moral maladies ; that prisons 
should be conducted in the interest of the 
prisoners and of society primarily, and 
that the interest of the treasury should 
be only incidental to the best effect upon 
the prisoners themselves and upon the 
community. 

With these comments, I may be indulged 
in stating a few conclusions, although the 
facts which lead to all of them have not 
been discussed in this paper. These con- 
clusions are : — 

1. That it is wisest to conduct prison in- 
dustries in such a way as to leave the least 
impression on prices and the rates of wages. 

2. That for incorrigibles and recidivists 
that form of labor should be adopted which 
requires the largest expenditure of muscle in 
proportion to the cost of raw materials and 
the least outlay of capital. 



206 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 

3. That there is not so much reformable 
material in prisons as philanthropists and 
others would have us believe. 

4. That very many persons now sent to 
prison by the courts should be sent to in- 
sane asylums, or institutions for the treat- 
ment of the feeble-minded. 

5. That it is the interest of labor and cap- 
ital to reduce the number of prisoners rather 
than constantly to attack the systems of 
prison labor. 

6. That in the conduct of prisons and the 
employment of prisoners the physician's 
point of view should be followed ; that is, 
the cure of moral maladies in State prisons, 
as well as the cure of mental and physical 
maladies in other institutions, should be the 
basis of management. 

7. That in the employment of convicts 
the effect upon the treasury should be inci- 
dental to the best effect upon the prisoners 
themselves and upon the community at 
large. 

8. That it is wise to let the system now 
on trial in the States that have provided for 



OF THE LABOR QUESTION 207 

it — the State Use System — alone until it 
can be fully tried, and determined whether 
it involves the very best elements of reforma- 
tion, remimeration, and the constant and 
healthy employment of the convicts. 

9. That the State shoidd always conduct 
its prisons and employ its prisoners in such 
a way that the individual shall not be de- 
graded. 






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